The 12 Neglected Movies of Christmas

Nathaniel Bell

The quest for a perfect fruitcake, a petty larcenist, and a sly Scottish dramedy should all grace your small screen this season.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash, Pexels

Christmas movies are hard to define yet easy to recognize. If you were to draw a Venn diagram of the genre, with one circle labeled “takes place during the holidays” and the other “themes of hope and redemption,” you might find Miracle on 34th Street at the very center. It’s a Wonderful Life would also live in the overlapping area, along with A Christmas Story—which still plays for 24 consecutive hours on TBS and TNT every year—and perhaps a Dickens adaptation or two.

Discovering a new classic is a tall order. (If it’s already a classic, why would it need to be discovered?) But if you’re willing to stretch the definition of “Christmas movie” just a little bit, possibilities begin to unfold. Keep the holiday milieu and the redemptive theme, but allow for a little melancholy amid the magic, and you’ve got plenty of alternatives to the familiar, comforting formula of a Hallmark special or a Christmas pageant.

To that end, here are 12 movies just outside the canon that beg for inclusion in this year’s holiday watch list. They vary enough in tone and subject to appeal to almost every mood and whim. Though none of them directly dramatize the birth of Christ, they are yoked together by a common yearning for salvation.

Remember the Night (1939)

When her trial is postponed until after the holidays, a petty larcenist (Barbara Stanwyck) spends Christmas with the lawyer (Fred MacMurray) assigned to prosecute her. The setup sounds perfectly contrived, but screenwriter Preston Sturges spins it into a scenario with surprising emotional punch. The movie’s beating heart is an extended visit to a family farm in which the woman confronts everything that’s been missing from her life. The irresistible warmth of this passage, which includes a rendition of a parlor song crooned by Sterling Holloway (the voice of Winnie the Pooh), could melt the hardest ice. | Watch on Prime Video.

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941)

Hospitality is a key theme among Christmas movies for its connection to the Nativity story. If the innkeeper hadn’t offered Mary and Joseph the stable, where would our Savior have been born? This virtue is put to the test in this spirited farce, in which a self-centered, razor-tongued radio celebrity (memorably played by Monty Woolley, repeating his Broadway role) is forced to spend Christmas in the home of a Midwestern family after sustaining a hip injury. Hilarity ensues, romance blossoms, and justice prevails in an ironic ending that forces everybody to learn their lesson. | Watch on Tubi.

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

A lifestyle columnist (Barbara Stanwyck again) who has constructed a persona as the ideal housewife despite knowing next to nothing about keeping house must fake her way through a Christmas dinner when a GI (Dennis Morgan) visits her house. (The premise could easily work today if you swapped columnist for influencer.) What makes the film rise above its cute conceit is its poignant but understated glimpse into American life during World War II, with its unspoken longing for comfort and connection. | Watch on Prime Video.

Come to the Stable (1949)

Though it may be a stretch to label this one a Christmas movie, this postwar drama about two French nuns who enlist the residents of a small New England town to build a children’s hospital deserves closer consideration. The film begins magically with the two sisters (Loretta Young and Celeste Holm) emerging from the snowy plains on a moonlit night and contains enough peace and good will toward men to fill a dozen pictures. Also, the New England town is called Bethlehem. | Watch on Prime Video.

The Holly and the Ivy (1952)

Family reunions are an unavoidable motif of the holiday genre, but few movies capture the complex feelings that can attend such gatherings. This finely wrought British drama, in which an aging clergyman (Ralph Richardson) contends with a series of revelations concerning his three grown children during a Christmas visit, demonstrates the need for repentance as well as forgiveness. It uses the titular folk carol to demonstrate the power of the holiday to cut as well as to heal: “The holly bears a prickle, as sharp as any thorn …” | Watch on Prime Video.

Shower of Stars: “A Christmas Carol” (1954)

No Dickens adaptation can hold a candle to the 1951 Scrooge starring Alastair Sim (sorry, Kermit!) but here’s one worth rescuing from obscurity: an hourlong episode of the variety series Shower of Stars starring Fredric March as Scrooge and Basil Rathbone as Marley’s ghost. Those unfamiliar with the glory of live television may balk at the black-and-white kinescope presentation, but the drama survives intact. Its greatest strength is its music: a score by the great Bernard Herrmann and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, who also wrote the teleplay. The result is a production whose soundtrack can be enjoyed independently of the visuals. | Watch on Prime Video.

Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

While it doesn’t match the emotional wonder of the original Lady for a Day, Frank Capra’s color remake is far more Christmasy. An elderly fruit peddler (Bette Davis) enlists the help of a local gangster (Glenn Ford) to transform her into an elegant society lady so her daughter won’t be ashamed of her when she visits with her rich fiancé. It’s a rare Hollywood film in which duplicity is presented as a virtue, and while it falls short of the magisterial It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra’s masterpiece), it has gained a small cult following. | Watch on Prime Video and Pluto.

ABC Stage 67: “A Christmas Memory” (1966)

Truman Capote narrates this adaptation of his own novella, a nostalgic, autobiographical account of his childhood relationship with a distant and eccentric relative. Most of the narrative revolves around the quest to make the perfect fruitcake, but there are emotional depths to the deceptively simple story. There is a remake in the 1990s starring Patty Duke, but the one with Geraldine Page, who won an Emmy, is the true classic. | Watch on YouTube.

Comfort and Joy (1984)

This sly Scottish dramedy, written and directed by the inimitable Bill Forsyth, is an offbeat holiday treat that connoisseurs seem to be keeping to themselves. Set in the days leading up to Christmas, the story involves a Glasgow radio deejay (Bill Paterson) who finds himself caught in the middle of a turf war between competing ice cream franchises. The themes here are reconciliation and renewal; the comedy is understated but richly quirky. | Watch on Hoopla.

The Dead (1987)

A Christmas party in Dublin at the turn of the 20th century is the backdrop for John Huston’s final film, a brilliant adaptation of James Joyce’s celebrated short story. The dinner gathering is rendered in warm, dusky tones and garlanded with a variety of sharply etched characterizations by some of Ireland’s finest actors. The film gracefully transitions into a profound meditation on the transience of life and the precious gift of memory. It may prove a bit melancholy for some tastes, but the rewards are ample. | Watch on Prime Video and Tubi.

Joyeux Noel (2005)

The 1914 Christmas truce is the subject of this Oscar-nominated French drama in which French, British, and German soldiers spontaneously lay down their arms to exchange carols instead of artillery shells. The fact-based story is a moving reminder that Christmas is about the promise of peace on earth, inaugurated by the arrival of Jesus. When Diane Kruger sings to her lover in the trenches, the voice belongs to French soprano Natalie Dessay, and the result is transcendent. | Watch on Netflix, Prime Video, and Tubi.

Christmas, Again (2014)

This low-key, low-budget, low-stakes indie drama captures the isolation that many people feel during the holidays. The center of attention is a lonely 30-something (Kentucker Audley) in New York City whose seasonal job as a Christmas tree retailer keeps him teetering on the edge of a breakdown. Modest and observational, the film unfolds with a series of encounters with a variety of colorful shoppers, one of which becomes a catalyst for renewal. The pleasure of this virtually plotless character study is in waiting to see the needle move—ever so slightly—away from despair and toward hope. | Watch on Prime Video.

Nathaniel Bell manages the internship program and teaches film history for the Snyder School of Cinema & Media Arts at Biola University. He lives in Whittier, California, with his wife and three sons.

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News

Amid Peace Talks, Russian Drone Damages Christian School in Kyiv

Jill Nelson

Ukrainians are wary of any plan that gives Moscow its “Christmas wish list.”

Damages to Kyiv Christian Academy from a Russian drone strike.

Image courtesy of Eric Moore

Eric Moore’s windows rattled as Ukraine’s air defense systems intercepted hundreds of incoming drones and missiles early Saturday. The South Dakota native and director of Kyiv Christian Academy spent three hours huddled in the stairwell of his townhouse with his wife and two sons, ages 7 and 9, during the most intense period of the attack.

Around 6 a.m., near the end of the nearly 10-hour bombardment, the school’s night security guard called. A drone had struck the grounds, blowing out 75 windows and leaving a crater 6 feet wide and 4 feet deep in the front lawn. The guard was patrolling the back of the property and escaped injury.

The K-12 school serves 47 students and shares its building with a private elementary school of 140 children. Moore surveyed the damage when it was safe to leave his home a few hours later.

“People were standing around, taking in the scene,” he told Christianity Today. “A dodgeball tournament had been scheduled for that morning by [the Christian group] Athletes in Action.”

The attack on the capital city left 3 dead and 29 injured while cutting power to the western half of the city. It calls into question the Kremlin’s commitment to ongoing peace talks.

“While everyone is discussing points of peace plans, Russia continues to pursue its ‘war plan’ of two points: to kill and destroy,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, wrote on X.

After months of failed negotiations, Washington launched a new wave of diplomacy that began with a controversial 28-point peace plan, leaked by Axios in mid-November. The proposal made major concessions to Russia, including requiring Ukraine to cede land beyond the roughly 20 percent Russia currently occupies; shrink its army from around 800,000 to 600,000; and abandon all efforts to join NATO.

Ukraine and its European allies sharply criticized the plan, warning that insufficient security guarantees will invite the Kremlin to rearm and launch another invasion in the near future.

On Sunday, Ukrainian officials met in Florida to revise the plan with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The next day, Witkoff and Kushner flew to Moscow for talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the revised plan “looks better,” though Putin signaled his displeasure and blamed Europe for amendments he called “absolutely unacceptable.” He warned that Russia is ready to go to war with European states if attacked.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the revised draft increases the cap on Ukraine’s military personnel to its current strength, defers land negotiations to “discussion between the leaders of the US and Ukraine,” and softens the language on NATO membership.

“Being tired doesn’t mean we’re ready to give up,” said Maia Mikhaluk, a pastor’s wife who lives in Kyiv and has helped plant churches across Ukraine for the past 18 years. She believes the original plan handed the Kremlin its “Christmas wish list” and provided “nothing that is good for Ukraine.”

If Moscow’s land grabs are legitimized or expanded, many of the Mikhaluks’ 27 church plants across the country will be in danger, she noted. “We have pastors in our network who would have to flee from the areas occupied by Russians, because if they stay, they’ll be slaughtered,” she said.

According to a Mission Eurasia report, Russian soldiers have killed more than a dozen priests and pastors in Ukraine since the war began. The organization’s president, Sergey Rakhuba, told CT that the Kremlin’s seizure of churches and detention of pastors in Russia-occupied regions should serve as a warning for what could happen nationwide if Ukraine’s security guarantees are sidelined in negotiations.

“This will happen with all of Ukraine if you give Putin a chance,” Rakhuba said. “He’s not going to stop with this so-called peace deal.”

Other unresolved issues in the framework include the future of Ukrainian elections and the fate of nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children that Russia abducted and subjected to indoctrination.

Despite the uncertainty and near-daily attacks on civilians, churches remain full and Christians continue serving with resilience, Rakhuba said. “I have not seen such a powerful movement of God in the countries of the former Soviet Union in my missional memory,” he added.

Last month, Mission Eurasia hosted its third annual volunteer forum, bringing together hundreds of Christians to share best practices and resources. The organization also provided wood-burning stoves for volunteers to deliver to Ukrainians whose homes were damaged by the ongoing war.

Ministries face new obstacles as well. Mikhaluk said Russian drones have become more accurate and deadly in recent months and are targeting humanitarian aid vans. Her church halted its aid deliveries to Kherson and Donetsk due to the increased risk. Some Ukrainian cities have even draped large fishing nets over their streets to trap drones aimed at vehicles and pedestrians.

Still, ministry work continues. Moore spent the weekend with more than 100 volunteers cleaning up glass and installing temporary windows at Kyiv Christian Academy. Classes resumed on Tuesday, and the school launched a campaign to raise money for new windows.

Mission Eurasia volunteers continue delivering food parcels to families in need and sharing messages of hope to marginalized communities. The group has delivered more than 300,000 food packages this year.

Mikhaluk’s church, a member of the Association of Missionary

Evangelical Churches of Ukraine, has redirected its frontline aid efforts to internally displaced people around Kyiv who need firewood, blankets, and other necessities as temperatures drop. She said Moscow has intensified its attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure, and many fear this winter could be the most difficult since Moscow’s full-scale invasion began nearly four years ago.

The outcome of this week’s peace talks remains uncertain, but Mikhaluk said she knows where her hope lies. “God has always been very close and very real in those dark times,” Mikhaluk said. “When you’re completely stripped of whatever false securities you had—that, I think, is when we’re closest with God.”

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Theology

Russell Moore’s Favorite Books of 2025

Russell Moore

Columnist

CT’s editor at-large recommends a handful of biographies—from Augustine to Robert Frost—along with sci-fi, Stephen King, social media, and more.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Unsplash

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

As soon as I hear the sound system play Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” I know it’s time to start compiling my list of my favorite books of the year. That happens, as you know, the day after Halloween. Below are books that resonated with me in some way or another in this crazy year. Here they are in alphabetical order by author.

Leslie Baynes, Between Interpretation and Imagination: C. S. Lewis and the Bible (Eerdmans)

“Even as a child who knew almost nothing about the Bible, I recognized the major biblical references right away, and as I studied Scripture and reread the Chronicles [of Narnia], I delighted in finding richer meaning in the books every time I picked them up,” the author of this book writes. “Like Edmund’s sister Lucy in Prince Caspian, I saw Aslan get bigger every time I returned to Narnia.”

Leslie Baynes, a former scholar in residence at The Kilns in Oxford, England, explores how C. S. Lewis interacted with current biblical scholarship and how he related his biblical depiction to his literary imagination. Even at points where I differed with the author, this was an invigorating read. That’s particularly true of the last half, where she explores how the Bible—especially the Gospel of John—shows up in the Chronicles of Narnia. She notes that biblical references become more explicit when Aslan is present.

Wendell Berry, Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story (Counterpoint)

Since I’ve written a full-length review essay of this book for Christianity Today—and since regular readers know how much Berry has shaped my imagination and thought—I will not replow that field. This is a beautiful book, a fitting endpoint, if it is, for the Port William community. The book ends with these words:

As he has come to know, Andy’s grief for the things that are lost affirms his love for them, as even the loss of them affirms the bounty by which they once existed, for in this world grief goes hand in hand with gratitude.

“Better than any argument is to rise at dawn / and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup,” Berry once wrote. This book is like that cup—sweet, with just the right amount of bitter mixed in, which makes the sweetness even better. This book is not an argument. It’s a standing ground—and a good one.

Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart (Norton)

Nicholas Carr warned us, years before it was an everyday topic of conversation, what digital life would do to our attention spans. This book looks at what social media technologies in particular have done to us, why, and what we can do about it. This is not abstract tech sociology. There are some clearly identified villains: The tech bros about whom Carr writes care more for statistics than people.

Carr identifies why social media led us to this crisis of rage, resentment, and unseriousness. Social media technologies function based on the fact that human beings need to be seen and acknowledged. We can do that quietly in person, but on social media, we must be loud. Plus, he shows, our familiarity with one another leads not to more connection but to less. Envy and anger, he notes, are fueled by proximity. The “technologies of connection” give us these dark aspects of nearness without communion.

The book explains why most people look at their own images repeatedly when on a Zoom call, and it’s not, as I would have thought, narcissism. It’s that human beings are constantly alert to how others view us. The person looking at that image is wondering how he or she appears before the judgment seat of everybody else. In an always-online world, that has implications.

And once again, Carr warns about what’s coming next, or rather, what’s already here but mostly unnoticed: the attempt to replace reality itself with an algorithm-created world that lets a person think he or she created it. That much of the church is not even thinking about this is itself a crisis—and one for which we’ll pay for generations.

Carr writes,

Maybe salvation, if that’s not too strong a word, lies in personal, willful acts of excommunication—the taking up of positions, first as individuals and then, perhaps, together, not outside of society but at society’s margin, not beyond the reach of the informational flow but beyond the reach of its liquefying force. … If you don’t live by your own code, you’ll live by another’s.

You can listen to Carr and me talk about these topics—and many more—here.

Catherine Conybeare, Augustine the African (Norton)

Augustine is kind of like John F. Kennedy in one way (and one way only): People love to write about his life, even as we might ask ourselves, “What else is there to say?” I’ve read almost all these books about Augustine and usually conclude that it’s impossible to improve on Peter Brown’s epic biography, Augustine of Hippo. But this book is different.

Conybeare, a respected classicist, concentrates on one aspect of Augustine that is usually left out of any consideration of his life or work: He was African. She then shows why this matters. It’s not a matter of 21st-century identity politics but a matter of understanding the world that shaped one who would shape the centuries to come. She traces the uniquely African context of languages, of relationship to Rome, of the particular crises and fragmentations of the church.

She does all this without turning Augustine into a mere receptacle of the political or cultural or theological forces around him. There is only one Augustine, and she reminds readers of this in the quotations she chooses from him. Here’s one, about his education: “People were more displeased if one pronounced ‘human’ without the ‘h’ than if one felt hatred for a human being.”

Stephen King and Maurice Sendak, Hansel and Gretel (HarperCollins)

This is, I’m quite sure, the only Stephen King story you will ever read that ends with these words: “They lived happily ever after.” King was asked to reimagine the Brothers Grimm story, using artwork done long ago by the now-deceased author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are. The result is a beautifully illustrated book that keeps intact the horror of a story about really horrible things: abandonment, lostness, poverty, predatory adults.

But as Sendak knew, the way to overcome the “wild things” is not to pretend they’re not there; it’s to stare them straight in the eyes until they make you their king.

In introducing the book, King writes, “Reader, I hope you will enjoy this poor effort at breathing a bit of life into an old story, and I know you will enjoy Maurice Sendak’s art, which is sunny on top and dark inside. Or vice versa.”

Ian McEwan, What We Can Know: A Novel (Knopf)

When I started reading this novel, I thought I knew what it was. McEwan writes a kind of science fiction—a couple of researchers working a hundred years from now, after nuclear wars and artificial intelligence and climate disaster have wiped away civilization almost to the nub, with the possible exception of the one remaining superpower, Nigeria. Two researchers in that future archipelago, which is what remains of the United Kingdom, are looking for a long-lost document rumored to be the pinnacle of 21st-century genius—“A Corona for Vivien,” written by a poet for his wife on her 54th birthday.

The story flashes back and forth between our recent past (2014) and 22nd-century Oxford. The narrative turns out to be a hand guiding the reader into a haunted house; all the while, the reader barely notices how the lights are dimming. At one point, the book seemed to have shifted from a sophisticated literary take on Blade Runner into the world of insufferably condescending and morally repulsive characters from a John Updike novel (Rabbit Runner?). And then I found that this too was misdirection.

I hardly know how to describe the story line without spoiling it for those of you who will want to read it, except to say the book is ultimately about time, memory, guilt, shame, and the question of whether there is something more than the judgment of history. The characters seem to seek all kinds of things—pleasure, fame, stability, a missing poem—but they are really looking for atonement, to resurrect the title of a previous McEwan book.

Daniel Nayeri, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story (Levine Querido)

A couple years ago, something sad came untrue. I missed out on one of the most enjoyable books I’d read in a decade from this list. Beth Moore recommended that I read Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad Is Untrue, saying, “You’re just going to have to trust [me]; this book is amazing.” She kept on me, asking, “Have you read it yet?” until I did. I realized very quickly that she was right. But I read it the year after its publishing date, so I didn’t get to include it here. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

The Teacher of Nomad Land tells the story of an orphaned brother and sister in Iran during the Second World War. I suppose you could say it’s kind of Hansel and Gretel, except with Nazis instead of witches. The boy, Babak, aspires to teach nomadic children to read and to watch out for his little sister, Sana. They encounter a Jewish boy on the run from a German who seeks to kill him. I don’t think I’m spoiling this fast-paced story by telling you the last words of it: “Babak is a teacher, and a teacher is one who gives. Sana is a kid sister. Everybody has good work to do.”

This time I was the one texting Beth: “You have got to read this. It’s amazing.” Think of this newsletter as a text from a friend saying the same thing: Read this. It’s amazing.

Adam Plunkett, Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Robert Frost might not be at the very top of a list of “Writers I Like but Would Not Want to Live Next Door To,” but he’s definitely on the first page or two. I’ve always found Frost brilliant but thought of him as a “You kids get off my lawn on a snowy evening” kind of grouch. This book surprised me by making me see a more human, more complicated, and more likable Frost. While changing the reader’s perspective of the poet himself, this book takes the reader into a deeper look at the work that came out of his complex psychology.

There’s a reason many people misremember the name of one of the most famous American poems as “The Road Less Traveled,” and this book tells us why. But Frost did not write the “The Road Not Taken” as a “You can do it” sign in a human resources department or a “Be yourself” lyric for a Disney film. The actual elegiac force of the poem is wrapped up with the life and work this book describes and analyzes.

Plunkett shows us the changes in Frost’s political views, his conflicted relationship with Christianity and the Bible, his insight into the meaning of metaphor, and his lifelong attempts to balance loyalty and ideals, justice and mercy (he preferred justice and called himself an “Old Testament Christian”). Plunkett quotes Frost in a letter: “Everyone is marked by his own craziness that he does not give way to.” The rest of the book shows us how that worked itself out in one life—and the art that called out from it.

Jonathan Rauch, Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy (Yale University Press)

I try not to include books by friends on this list, but as you can see from some past years’ lists, sometimes that’s asking too much. This is one of those exceptions. In 2003—long before I knew him—Jon wrote an essay in The Atlantic celebrating the decline of religion and the coming Scandinavian-ish secular paradise. As I mentioned in our podcast conversation on the book, I recently found a piece of mine blasting him for it. Now we seem to be in a whole new world from that innocent time—and Jon says he’s changed his mind.

As you’ll see, he hasn’t changed his mind as much as I (and his many other Christian friends) would like. He’s still an atheist. But as this book lays out, he now recognizes that a healthy American democracy needs Christianity to be, well, Christian.

Rauch diagnoses with precision what he calls “sharp Christianity”—the fear-based, siege-driven posture that defines identity by enemies and politics by apocalypse. “Be not afraid” became “be very afraid,” he told me, and the pews started catechizing the pulpits.

He makes the case for what he calls “thick Christianity,” a faith that asks much, forms deeply, and binds people together in the slow ways of affection and belonging. That’s quite different from the post-Christian secularism some progressives wanted. It’s also quite different from those on the purportedly Christian right who think the New Jerusalem is replicating Hungary on I-65 in Tennessee.

The book is a plea from a sympathetic outsider to those of us who are Christians, asking no more from us than that we be ourselves.

You can listen to the conversation we had about the book here.

Graham Tomlin, Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made the Modern World (Hodder & Stoughton)

Earlier this year, going through my journals from when I was a teenager, I saw how much of my prayer life had to do with math. I was constantly in fear of Algebra … and Algebra II … and Geometry I … and so on. I was surprised, then, when in young adulthood one of the major influences on my spiritual development was a dead mathematician.

Blaise Pascal’s Pensées shaped me—and it keeps doing so every time I go back to it, which is all the time. Having read Graham Tomlin before, I knew this would be a clear and careful analysis, so I read it thinking its main value would be to help introduce other people to Pascal. I was surprised. This book is much more than that.

Tomlin helps us not just see Pascal and his thought but also see with him such important things as the reason that faith is not, in fact, algebra. The book guides the reader to see the difference between the authority of testimony and the authority of reason. It shows why Pascal understood the natural world to neither confirm nor deny God’s existence since it provides hints that are “too much to deny and not enough to affirm.”

Tomlin also brilliantly and accurately deconstructs the caricature many people make of Pascal’s wager. He puts Pascal in conversation with important modern thinkers like Iain McGilchrist. And he puts the reader in touch with the testimony of a man who met and experienced not the God of the philosophers but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

“Pascal is an enigma, who recognized the enigmatic nature of this life that we have to live and the motivations that swirl around our minds and hearts,” Tomlin writes. “Like his great hero St. Augustine, he knew himself, and so he knew us, even us moderns, sometimes better than we know ourselves. Which is why, whether we follow his Christian faith or not, he remains an insightful, if sometimes uncomfortable, companion along the journey, illuminating our path with a strange light from another world, a world he yearned for and on which he wagered his life.”

Russell Moore is editor at-large and columnist at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

Church Life

Celebrating Christmas with Hot Chai and Crispy Murukku

Surinder Kaur

Amid rising persecution, Indian Christians share Jesus’ love with friends and neighbors through delectable dishes.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Pexels

Abhishek Singh, 46, fondly remembers going caroling from door to door as a child in Jabalpur, a city in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. As he sang Christmas carols in English and Hindi with his friends, appreciative families would hand him cashews, almonds, and sometimes even kebabs—a coveted delicacy of grilled minced-meat skewers flavored with aromatic spices.

Now, his home welcomes a steady stream of visitors, including eager young carolers, at Christmastime. “Our kettle would never be off the stove,” Singh, who’s an office manager, said. “Chai was constantly on the boil to serve to the guests.”

Across India’s bustling cities, Christmas hospitality takes on a uniquely communal dimension as homes become gathering places for people across different faiths, even as Christian hosts continue to face persecution amid rising Hindu nationalism.

Hindu extremists have forced Christians living in Madhya Pradesh to flee their homes. Last year, the state’s district court sentenced 42-year-old pastor Ramesh Ahirwar and his wife, Sakshi, to two years in prison and fined them 25,000 rupees (about $300 USD) each for breaking an anticonversion law.

The Ahirwars paid the fine while submitting an appeal to the High Court, and the state court granted them bail last May. They are now waiting for the court to announce the date of their appeal hearing, all the while feeling like a sword is hanging over their heads.

This has not dampened their resolve to open their home to visitors at Christmastime. “We cannot live in constant fear, so we chose to trust the Lord and continue to live our lives one day at a time,” Ramesh Ahirwar said.

After he leads the December 25 service, his church holds lunch in a big space to accommodate congregants and visitors. Both events have an “open invitation” that he extends to everyone he knows. “A few of my Hindu neighbors and Muslim friends attend the Christmas play and join us for lunch,” he said.

These gestures of hospitality in Christian homes across India reflect other interfaith celebrations throughout the year, like Diwali with Hindu friends and Eid al-Fitr with Muslims.

In Hyderabad, the capital of the south-central state of Telangana, 65-year-old retired English professor Grace Sudhir spends several weeks preparing her annual Christmas feast. In one corner of her kitchen sits buttery dough that she will fry into crispy murukku (Tamil for “twisted”), a festive snack prepared with rice-and-lentil dough and added spices.

In another corner, candied fruit and nuts soak in spirits, their sweet, boozy aroma mixing with the cardamom and cinnamon that perfumes the air. A plum cake, stuffed with a variety of nuts, cherries, orange and lemon peels and seasoned with cloves, cumin, and nutmeg, bakes in the oven.

When she’s done, Sudhir will share these creations with her neighbors of various faiths to demonstrate “Christ’s love for all humanity,” she said. She does this even as Telangana is experiencing a spike in violence against Christians this year, with mobs assaulting pastors and church leaders, burning Bibles, and vandalizing church buildings.

“As Christians, we are supposed to pray for those who persecute us and spread the good news about Christ, and that is what I try to do,” she said.

Christmas cuisine in India differs from state to state. But it has deeply Christian roots, dating back to the arrival of the apostle Thomas to southwestern India’s Malabar Coast in what is traditionally believed to be AD 52.

The region, now known as Kerala, is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Christians in Kerala—better known as Syrian Christians—make a special Christmas treat every year called appams. These lacy-edged pancakes, shaped from rice batter, contain soft, pillowy centers and are perfect for soaking up coconut-rich stews fragrant with black pepper and curry leaves. The traditional duck roast that follows is a study in patience; it takes about three hours of cooking time to prepare the tender meat, its skin crackling with spices.

Christians in Tamil Nadu, a state on the southeast coast, often prepare a popular regional dish, Dindigul biryani, which comprises distinctive dark grains and tender meat like chicken, lamb, or seafood marinated overnight in yogurt and spices.

In Goa, a state on India’s western coast, the most impressive part of a Christmas feast may be the bebinca, a multilayered dessert that requires days of preparation. Each of its 7–16 layers is individually cooked until the coconut-egg dessert achieves its distinctive striped appearance.

Prior to pulling this sweet out, hosts may serve dukra maas, in which pork belly becomes butter-soft after hours of slow cooking with spices, the fat melting into a sauce eaten with sannas, pillowy rice cakes that smell of toddy (a coconut wine).

Meanwhile, Christmas celebrations in Christian-majority states like Nagaland and Mizoram often feature nga atoiba thongba, a mashed fish curry made with vegetables and spices.

Over in the western Indian state of Gujarat, Sunday school teacher Jyotsana Lall, 49, hosts five different groups of non-Christian guests every Christmas, from her children’s friends and their parents to marathon-running companions and colleagues.

Since a majority of people in Gujarat are vegetarian, Lall mainly prepares dishes like bajre ka vada (pearl millet fritters), bajre ki bhakri (pearl millet flatbread), and totha ki sabji (pigeon-pea bean curry).

In a state with an anticonversion law in effect, it is difficult to have an open conversation with someone about Christ and his redemptive power, Lall says.

“But a decorated house, the aroma of goodies, and above all the love with which we share food with others send the message of the sacredness of Christmas,” she said.

Welcoming non-Christian friends for Christmas celebrations in her home often piques her guests’ curiosity about the holiday and compels them to ask her about her reasons for doing so, Lall said. Last year, a Hindu friend likened Lall’s Christmas busyness to her experience of Diwali fatigue and asked Lall how she could host so many different groups for meals and do everything “with a smile.”

Her friend’s question was a “great opportunity to share with her the source of my joy that does not vanish under stress or pressure,” Lall said.

Meanwhile, Singh welcomes close to 25 non-Christian families into his home in Madhya Pradesh, starting the week before Christmas up to the first week of the new year. His mother often prepares presents for close friends too, giving them new saris and shirts for their children along with Christmas cake and home-cooked goodies.

Jesus’ boldness in crossing religious and social boundaries by dining with tax collectors, healing a Roman centurion’s servant, and conversing with Samaritan women has been instrumental in guiding Singh’s Christmas hosting tradition.

“[Christ’s] hospitality wasn’t conditional on conversion but flowed from love,” Singh said. “He demonstrated that God’s welcome extends beyond faith boundaries, inviting us to do the same.”

- More from Surinder Kaur

Books

My Top 5 Books on Christianity in Southeast Asia

Compiled by Manik Corea

Explore how the faith has flourished in Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries in this religiously diverse region.

Illustration by Christianity Today

The following books were selected by Manik Corea, national director of the Singapore Centre for Global Missions. He and his family were missionaries in Thailand and involved in church-planting for 13 years before returning to Singapore in 2021.

Southeast Asia is the “most diverse region on Earth,” the Encyclopedia Britannica declares. It is home to adherents of all the major religions, alongside many local and folk religions of great assortment. Seven in 10 adults identify as Buddhist or Muslim in countries like Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center study.

Historically, Christianity has had a relatively late arrival in Southeast Asia compared to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. The Christian faith is also often perceived as a “Western” religion, which may be because the first organized waves of missionaries only came on the coattails of colonial expansion. The Spanish arrived in the Philippines in the 15th century; the Dutch headed to Indonesia and the British to Burma (Myanmar) in the 17th century; and the British set foot in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore two centuries later.

But this mode of faith transmission is changing. Today, Southeast Asia is home to nascent but vibrant Christian churches and movements. For instance, Singapore is the most religiously diverse country in the region, with the highest rate of conversions to Christianity. Some of the largest megachurches in the continent worship in malls within Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia.

Evangelicals around the world who are curious about how the gospel has changed the religious landscape in Southeast Asia and how the Good News continues to spread there will appreciate these books, which approach the faith from various angles: history, theology, missions, and comparative religion.

Christianity in East and Southeast Asia, edited by Kenneth R. Ross, Francis D. Alvarez and Todd M. Johnson

For a comprehensive understanding of Christianity in Southeast Asia, this 2022 publication is a must-read. It offers clear statistical data, analysis, and insightful writing on core religious issues affecting every country in Southeast and East Asia, even as “what is Asian and what is Christian are still being constructed and discovered,” Roman Catholic theologian Francis D. Alvarez writes in his opening essay.

The book gives special focus to Christian growth and decline in places like Laos, Brunei, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam. You will learn about the faith’s historical impact, emerging themes, and developing trends in each context, such as evidence of church growth in ground previously hard for the gospel in Thailand and Indonesia.

This is a helpful resource for church and mission leaders, researchers, or seminary students who are hoping to gain a deeper, broader grasp of how Christianity is shaping identity and culture in the region.

Mangoes or Bananas? The Quest for an Authentic Asian Christian Theology, by Hwa Yung

Believers in Southeast Asia are more like bananas than mangoes, Malaysian Methodist bishop Hwa Yung asserts. In other words, Christians only look Asian on the outside but have been schooled and discipled internally to think and behave like Western (or white) Christians.

Yung argues that Asian Protestant theologies continue to be held captive by Western Cartesian dualism—the idea that our rational minds and souls are independent from our material bodies—and enlightenment epistemologies that privilege natural or scientific worldviews.

These influences have diminished valuable aspects of Asian Christian identity, such as communal, holistic approaches to life and familiarity with the supernatural. Yung champions the need for more authentic contextualization within local worldviews while holding tenaciously to core and historic Christian tenets.

This scholarly work is Yung’s best known. I recommend it to Christians who want to explore critically how we should think, work, and live out God’s mission in the complex cultural milieus of Southeast Asia.

Clean Hands, Pure Hearts & Beautiful Feet, by Flora Man and Emily Soh

Southeast Asian Christians serve in varied and challenging places across the globe today. Countries that were once mission fields are now a mission force to be reckoned with, and this beautifully illustrated book is ample proof of that.

Stories of 10 Singaporean missionaries are brought to life in short, powerful detail for both children and adults. Many of these missionaries served in remote, far-flung places like the mountains of Bolivia, the villages of southern China, and the thick jungles of Papua New Guinea.

You’ll encounter people like Daniel and Wei Lei Jesudason, a couple who translated Scripture for two tribal groups steeped in sorcery and black magic in Papua New Guinea, as well as Tan Lai Yong, who raised up “barefoot doctors” in the hills of Yunnan Province, China.

Neighboring Faiths: A Christian Introduction to World Religions, by Winfried Corduan

Corduan writes as an evangelical committed to the exclusivity of the gospel while still managing to give each religion surveyed a fair and respectful analysis. His 449-page book is essential for believers in Southeast Asia who strive to love religiously diverse neighbors well.

Through a sociological perspective, Corduan explores various faiths—including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism— that are either the majority religion in a Southeast Asian country or strongly represented in the region. Each chapter provides historical, doctrinal, and practical details behind each religion and its contemporary practice today, with detailed descriptions of daily rituals and rites of passage.

Corduan also tackles topics like the rise of radical movements within Islam and discusses various popular Hindu and Buddhist movements that have exported their unique emphases and practices across Southeast Asia. He also provides suggestions for how Christians should engage each religion constructively and wisely.

Good News for Bruised Reeds: Walking with Same-Sex Attracted Friends, edited by Joanna Hor, Ng Zhi-Wen, Bernice Tan, Tan Soo-Inn, Ronald JJ Wong, and Raphael Zhang

Same-sex attraction is a thorny, often-taboo issue among the generally conservative churches of Southeast Asia. But it will not go away, and we must engage with it wisely and biblically.

This year, Thailand became the first Southeast Asian nation to legalize same-sex marriage. In other countries, notably the Philippines and Singapore, there are growing movements that support LGBTQ rights for marriage and are calling for “transgender” to be recognized as a legitimate gender category.

How should Christians approach this issue with truth and grace? This book features compelling first-person narratives of believers who have struggled or continue to live with same-sex attraction. It also offers insights into how churches can care well for them with compassion while maintaining fidelity to God’s original design and his redeeming grace and vision for all people.

Check out other top 5 books on Christianity in East Asia and South Asia.

- More from Compiled by Manik Corea

News

Hong Kong Church Rallies After 60 Congregants Lose Homes in Deadly Fire

Joyce Wu

The territory’s worst fire in decades claimed more than 150 lives.

A major fire engulfs several apartment blocks in Hong Kong's Tai Po district on November 26, 2025.

Tommy Wang / Getty

Windy Yeung was passing through Hong Kong’s northern district of Tai Po on November 26 after a work meeting when she received news that a fire had broken out at the Wang Fuk Court apartment towers. Wanting to see how she could help, Yeung headed to the area and found distressed evacuated residents gathered outside.

A man in his 30s told her he had been trying for more than six hours to reach his father, a resident of the apartment towers, but hadn’t heard from him. He asked Yeung if there was any hope left for his dad.

Yeung, the communication officer of the Hong Kong Church Network for the Poor (HKCNP), said she felt her heart break at the question. Maybe his father was in the hospital, she suggested. Even if they couldn’t do anything and no one could enter the fire, Jesus could, she told him. The man then nodded and teared up.

The blaze that started at one of Wang Fuk Court’s eight 31-story apartment buildings that afternoon grew into Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades. Flames rapidly spread to six other buildings, destroying nearly 2,000 apartments. The fire has killed at least 156 people, including one firefighter, has injured dozens of others, and has displaced thousands of residents. More than 30 people remain missing.

Although firefighters extinguished the flames after more than 40 hours, Hong Kong continues to grapple with the devastation. Amid the grief, local churches have provided shelter and aid even as some church members mourn their own losses in the blaze.

At Tai Po Baptist Church, located minutes away from Wang Fuk Court, more than 60 members of the congregation lost their homes, according to pastor Dustin Yee. During worship services the Sunday after the blaze, senior pastor Root Chau preached on Psalm 46 to remind congregants God is their refuge amid devastation.

At the 11:30 a.m. service, about 300 attendees filled the pews of the second-floor sanctuary. Many congregants wore black, and several cried during the service, which included singing a Cantonese translation of the hymn “In His Presence.”

Chau told the congregants that one member had stayed in the bathroom of her 27th-floor apartment until firefighters rescued her. Church leaders had visited displaced members at temporary shelters. He asked congregants to pray for the church staff members who are helping those suffering from the catastrophe.

Tai Po Baptist prepared its space as a temporary shelter in the aftermath of the blaze, but only one married couple stayed there over a few nights, and another person visited briefly to rest, said Yee. The couple, who don’t attend the church, were too scared to stay in their own home, which was located near Wang Fuk Court, Yee explained. He added that people from Wang Fuk Court preferred to stay at the government-run temporary shelter, where they could more quickly receive information on matters like how to register for new identification documents.

A team of pastoral staff and counselors went to the site for identifying the bodies of fire victims and offered spiritual and emotional support to people who lost loved ones. The church is also providing funds for the displaced, and praying for the bereaved and injured.

Other churches and Christian organizations are offering similar services, and the government is supplying money, short-term hotel stays, and transitional housing for the displaced. Volunteers set up stations at a nearby housing complex to distribute donated items, such as clothes, packs of toilet paper, loaves of sliced bread, and pet supplies.

On the day of the fire, Yeung stayed around Wang Fuk Court from 5 p.m. until around midnight, comforting displaced residents and offering to pray for them. Yeung called some church friends in the area, asking them to bring bedding and clothes to the nearby churches that had opened up as temporary shelters for fire victims.

It is still unclear how the fire started at the apartment towers, which were undergoing renovations at the time. Construction workers had erected bamboo scaffolding over Wang Fuk Court’s eight towers and had covered the scaffolding with green protective netting.

Government authorities believe the blaze started when the netting on one building’s lower floors caught fire. It then spread to highly flammable Styrofoam boards that the construction company had installed outside the building’s windows. The fire-alarm system in the buildings was not working effectively, according to the fire service, leaving many residents unaware of the danger until it was too late to escape. Authorities also found that some of the netting had failed to meet fire safety standards.

Amid an ongoing probe into the fire, police have arrested at least 13 people involved with the renovations for suspected manslaughter. Some of the suspects are also under investigation by Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption for possible graft connected to Wang Fuk Court’s $42 million renovation project.

During the city’s official three-day mourning period, which began on Saturday, Hong Kong and Chinese flags at government buildings flew at half-staff. Citizens grieving the deaths of Wang Fuk Court residents—including at least 10 migrant domestic helpers from Indonesia and the Philippines who died—streamed to a park by the now-charred apartment towers. There they laid white and yellow flowers and wrote notes expressing their sorrow.

South China Morning Post reported that pastor Jenny Lam Yat-kwan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hong Kong Diamond Lutheran Church had lost three family members in the fire. She noted that three young volunteers from a church in Tai Po helped her family as they sought to identify the bodies of loved ones.
“I saw God’s mercy and grace when these little angels quietly accompanied my family since Wednesday,” she told the Post. “They came every day, recognized my folks, and silently accompanied them.”

Although Yeung’s organization, HKCNP, is not directly involved in frontline disaster relief, it convened a Zoom meeting on Friday to connect its affiliated pastors from different districts with Tai Po pastors so they can discuss how to work together. HKCNP has also partnered with herbal-beverage company Hung Fook Tong to place donation boxes at the retailer’s stores across Hong Kong and to collect money for rebuilding victims’ lives. The group also created a spreadsheet listing many free resources, including medical services and counseling, to help the displaced find what they need.

Some pastors—who have kicked into high gear to help Wang Fuk Court victims—feel physically, emotionally, and spiritually weary. Yee is no exception.

“Frankly, I’m feeling tired right now,” he said late Sunday afternoon. “[We] pastors have no experience in doing this large-scale disaster relief and spiritual support.” At the same time, he appreciates the support his church has received from churches overseas, as well as from Tai Po Baptist’s own social service department, which provides counseling for its pastors.

What the church can best provide the grieving community is its presence, Yee said: “The most important thing is to be with them going through this.”

- More from Joyce Wu

Church Life

The Priest and Social Worker Deradicalizing Jihadists in Prison

Jayson Casper

One Catholic and one Muslim, they disagree on the role of religion in their work in Lebanon, but are united in their aim.

The shadow of a cross on the wall of Lebanon's Roumieh prison as prisoners stand behind bars during the Holy Thursday mass.

Patrick Baz / Stringer / Getty

Maya Yamout stared at the hardened jihadist sitting across from her over a plastic desk in the unkempt library prison. Books littered the floor. The man, a veteran al-Qaeda militant in the notorious Block B of Lebanon’s Roumieh jail pushed forward a glass of tea.

“Where’s the sugar?” Yamout asked.

The curt question fit their relationship. In their previous brief encounters, the prisoner called Yamout a spy, a pig, and all manner of insults that belittled her as a Muslim woman who did not wear a veil.

Yet this time, her mischievous smirk made the terrorist smile. Two weeks earlier, when he was sick, Yamout inquired about his health from prison guards and brought medicine and shampoo on her next visit. Once he recovered, he invited the visit, prompting the nervy but playful exchange. Sensing a breakthrough, Yamout proposed therapy. He accepted.

Eventually, filled with shame, he apologized for how poorly he treated her.

“To reach a prisoner, you have to bond over something,” said Yamout, the cofounder of Rescue Me, a Lebanese crime prevention and deradicalization organization.

But Yamout is clear: This something should not be religion. She’s found that speaking about faith often gets entwined in politics and leads to endless debate. It also rarely addresses what radicalized a militant in the first place.

Yet Marwan Ghanem, a priest in the Maronite Catholic church and president of the Lebanese chapter of Prison Fellowship International (PFI), takes the opposite approach. He centers his ministry on the story of Jesus and Zaccheus, believing the tax collector’s model of repentance can help any prisoner restore a debt to society.

Yamout and Ghanem worked independently in separate sections of Roumieh but met often for mutual encouragement. Despite their differences, when Yamout left in 2024 to pursue a PhD at the University of Swansea in the UK and budget restrictions at Rescue Me pinched its ability to go into prisons, she asked Ghanem to continue her work with extremists. She simply counseled him to go slow with religion, avoid provocation, be patient if insulted, and remember the prisoners’ humanity.

“Kill them with kindness,” Yamout said, “and kindness will prevail.”

Rescue Me, which Yamout and her sister Nancy founded in 2011, primarily worked among at-risk youth in the Hayy al-Gharbia neighborhood of Beirut until funding cuts in 2017 curtailed its service among the Lebanese poor as well as Syrian and Palestinian refugees.

Many in hopeless situations became easy targets for Islamic extremist groups, she discovered. And when prison overcrowding assigns ordinary criminals to Block B—designated for terrorist offenses—even the nonreligious can be radicalized through their need to belong, Yamout said.

She said Block B extremists fall into four categories. A quarter of her cases sought retribution for wrongs they suffered or the poverty they endured. Another quarter put a religious overlay on their frustration, while 35 percent did the same with politics. The remaining 15 percent are simple psychopaths—“I joined ISIS to smell the blood,” one told her.

Another prisoner she met fell into the second category. Born into Lebanon’s impoverished northern city of Tripoli, he went to Syria at the age of 19 to train with a jihadist group. A Lebanese court issued him the death penalty following his capture during clashes with the Lebanese army. Once in prison, he readily accepted working with Yamout and her sister.

No matter a prisoner’s classification in her system, Yamout engages each one individually through a variety of care including art therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, aggression replacement training, and newer techniques such as EMDR to address trauma. Over a decade in the prison, she has seen about 750 cases. At minimum she conducts six sessions with a prisoner. Some, like the man from Tripoli, require many more.

Only 10 people, she said, have gone back to terrorism after being released.

In the Tripoli prisoner’s case, Yamout recalled a conversation he had with Nancy.

“I deserve to die,” he said, quoting the quranic verse that a killer should be killed.

“I believe in rehabilitation and forgiveness,” she replied.

“But you are a Muslim,” he countered. “You have to follow this.”

“I go beyond religion,” she said. “I believe in second chances.”

Many years later, the prisoner sought Nancy’s opinion.

“Do you believe it can be right to kill a Lebanese soldier?” he asked.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“No,” he said quietly, his voice troubled by guilt.

The man remains in prison today, fasting and praying according to Islamic guidelines but distant from extremism. He followed Nancy’s advice to demonstrate his remorse by sharing his story with others. On Wednesdays, that became his routine in Roumieh, introducing new inmates to Block B.

“This is humanity,” Yamout said. “Why do I need religion?”

Ghanem, the Catholic priest, dedicated his life to answering this question. His early choir ministry morphed into charitable service in 2005, and through his Nusroto Association—Syriac for “chants of joy”—he runs a juvenile home, a shelter for battered women, and a drug rehabilitation center in addition to his work in the prisons.

Like Yamout, Ghanem won trust among the inmates by helping them secure essential medicine and hygiene products from outside the prison. But his breakthrough with the Islamists came when he gave an interview on television and spoke with compassion about their needs inside the prison. Many extremists in Lebanese prisons are Syrian, and many in the country resent the refugee population and the impact of Syria’s civil war on Lebanon.

“You are our abuna,” Ghanem said they told him, using the Arabic equivalent of father to address Catholic clergy. “They were proud to have a priest by their side.”

Using PFI programs The Prisoner’s Journey and Sycamore Tree, Ghanem told the prisoners about how the Messiah—avoiding Christian-Muslim controversy over the name Jesus or Isa—led Zaccheus to repent over defrauding his own people. True justice, Ghanem taught them, is not simply punishment in prison. It also restores relationships. The prisoner must confess his mistakes legally, in court. But then he must make it right with society.

Militant extremists seek justice for the ills of society through violence, Ghanem said. He helps them see the victims in their radicalized quest. And while he focuses on the social aspects of their crimes and life in prison, he does not ignore religion.

“Islam also demands repentance,” he said. “But my approach is Christian.”

Ghanem formerly served as the head prison chaplain for the Council of Catholic Patriarchs and Bishops of Lebanon, part of the interfaith High Council for Prisons that oversees all spiritual work. But it is primarily Christians, he said, who serve inmates outside their sect.

One day, a fight nearly broke out between Sunni and Shiite prisoners at Roumieh. Ghanem intervened to remind them they shared the same deprivations. Hungry, they both needed food. Hot, they both needed fans. He would do what he could to assist, he assured them, and the situation calmed.

Over time, Ghanem’s personal intervention in the lives of prisoners led one militant to send a letter of apology to the family of his victim, seeking reconciliation. Another, who detonated bombs on two passenger buses, told Ghanem he now knows that Christianity is a religion of love, forgiveness, and peace.

“As a priest, I speak to everyone as a human,” Ghanem said. “But I also help them see God in their life and show them the way to become a Christian.”

Rik Peels, a professor of religion at the Free University of Amsterdam and project leader of its Extreme Beliefs program, said academia is divided over the role of religion in deradicalization. Some view it as irrelevant, though he believes it is sometimes pivotal.

In his book Monotheism and Fundamentalism, Peels argued that all three Abrahamic religions must deal with problematic texts, mentioning the passages in Deuteronomy that can appear genocidal in advocating the killing of all Canaanites. But in teaching the image of God in all humanity, the unity in our fallen natures, and the nonviolence of the kingdom of God that loves even one’s enemies, Christianity provides essential principles to moderate a militant’s faith.

Studying violent extremism in America, the RAND Corporation found that structured interventions with sympathetic individuals outside the militant’s ideological circles can assist the process of deradicalization. Peels said that while the nature of extremism creates us-versus-them boundaries, such personal encounters are able to break through negative stereotypes.

Yamout recognizes the possible value of religious re-education, citing positive outcomes in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia while insisting on focusing on social and psychological factors. But in moving beyond spiritual particulars, she is living out hard-won lessons from her youth.

Raised in Tripoli before moving to Beirut at age 13, Yamout attended Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist schools where, like many Lebanese, she had friends from all sects. But after two friends went to Syria to join jihadist groups, the religious diversity of her environment drove her to seek God. Christians are sometimes better than Muslims in their love and acceptance of others, she felt, while Muslims often demonstrate a better commitment to justice.

In working together, they complement each other, Yamout said. But at age 24, trying to decide between political and religious approaches to her graduate work in deradicalization, she nearly died from a virus in her lung.

When she finally recovered, she realized that the presiding doctor caring for her was a Shiite, the primary nurse a Christian, and all were doing everything they could to save their Sunni patient.

“Humanity prevailed within me,” Yamout said, “and God gave me a mission.”

- More from Jayson Casper

Books

Review

Today’s Christians Can Learn from Yesterday’s Pagans

Grace Hamman

Classicist Nadya Williams argues for believers reading the Greco-Roman classics.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, Zondervan Academic

Around 650 years ago, the grandfather of English poetry wrote a poem about the fall of Troy. Unlike Homer and Virgil, his ancient predecessors on the subject, Geoffrey Chaucer chose to pen a romance. As befits a tragedy, his hero, Troilus, dies in battle, abandoned by his lover, Criseyde.

What follows is strange. Troilus’s soul leaves his body, rising above the fields of death. From this vantage point he witnesses the erratic stars, the wide spaces of heaven, and most of all, the insignificance of his own life. He laughs at this conclusion to all his woe and continues on his way to wherever the god Mercury will send him next.

The poet’s voice now enters as Troilus heads off to wherever virtuous pagans go after death. “Swich fyn!” he laments. “Such an end!” to Troilus’s great and wasted love, to his lusts and nobility. Chaucer directly addresses his audience: “O yong e fresshe folkes,” he writes, you are the image of God, and this world is a passing fancy. Seek not its feigned loves, its useless pagan gods and rites, its wretched appetites. Settle your affection on Christ. The poem ends with a prayer to the Trinity.

All true. But Geoffrey: If this is your foreboding lesson, why waste time and talent recounting the Trojan tale at all?

Nadya Williams’s accessible new book Christians Reading Classics takes up the same question Chaucer provokes, the same that early Christian writer Tertullian asks of reading pagan literature: “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Athens here stands in for the pagan art and learning of Greece and Rome before Christ’s salvific death and resurrection. As Williams states forthrightly, that art and learning need the Cross.

But in response to Tertullian, she argues that the relationship also goes the other way. Ancient writers who did not know the Lord can still offer us Christians great, humorous, ugly, and beautiful truths.

Christians Reading Classics sets out as an explicit apologetics for Christians reading the Greco-Roman classics, and it puts Williams’s experience as a former classics professor on full display. She makes no assumptions about readers’ depth of knowledge, carefully elucidating the biographies of figures like Plutarch or Aristophanes and even offering a glossary of unfamiliar terms. Lifelong learners, homeschooling parents, and students desiring context for their theological, literary, and historical studies will especially appreciate her pacing.

Organization also aids this apologetic project. Williams proceeds chronologically, a welcome choice for a book that brims with perhaps-unfamiliar names and places: Readers start in Homer (around the eighth century BC) and end in Boethius (who died around AD 524). Along the way, Williams keeps her history fresh by means of surprising pairings of genre and theme. A scandalous Athenian murder trial illustrates principles from Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric. Ancient cookbooks accompany warfare manuals. This approach offers breadth to readers who may be familiar with the big epics of the ancient world—The Odyssey, The Aeneid—but less conversant with smaller works, no less influential but more obscure. Aside from presenting glamorous battle heroes, the ancient world had its more homely and familiar texts, from recipes and gossip columns to bawdy comedies and political speeches.

Williams concludes each chapter with a look forward to our own times and an accompanying spiritual reflection. Chapter 7 begins in the women-centered tragedies of Aristophanes and ends in a moving contrast with Mary’s song of praise. The longing of Cicero, the “new man” in lineage-obsessed Roman society, speaks powerfully to our own scraping and striving despite our truer identity as “beloved children” of God.

Sometimes, these lessons from pagans are painfully relevant. On “How to Be a Good Man Under a Bad Emperor,” first-century historian and career politician Tacitus strikes particularly close to home. As Williams writes,

Bad emperors, Tacitus knew, were common; good ones were the exception. And this raised an important question for a historian who cared about role models: How can one remain a virtuous man under bad emperors? What is the cost of such virtue? And why is a virtuous life—and a possible untimely death because of it—worthwhile in a world that has dramatically different values? The very few heroes in Tacitus’s works are repeatedly men who put character and virtues first.

We Americans also live in an empire. What are the demands upon those of us who long to follow Christ here and now? How can we, like Tacitus’ infrequent heroes, practice virtue under vicious leadership? Christians Reading Classics follows the old paths of Ecclesiastes in unflattering but honest encouragement. There is nothing new under the sun. Our times are not more unprecedented than anyone else’s times.

“Jerusalem without Athens is ignorant of the physical and spiritual dangers of this world,” Williams writes. Lacking the witness of a world without Christ, we easily grow complacent or take things for granted. It is easy to slide into the reigns of the Neros or Galbas documented by Tacitus or become ensnared in the empty pursuit of reputation sought by Achilles or Agamemnon or fall prey to disillusionment and despair like Hesiod.

Williams’s other answer to Tertullian is more than a warning. It serves as an invitation to remember again how Christ and his church burst into the world in answer to timeless human longing.

When we read the pagan classics side by side with the Bible, especially the Gospels, something extraordinary happens. We are able to get closer to the world of the earliest converts to Christianity and can understand them better. In the process, we see why someone might turn their back on the cruelty of Zeus and seek the welcoming love of Christ. Thus, during our reading our own faith also grows.

These works made up the cultural universe of early Roman Empire believers. It is within their framework that ancient men and women encountered the transformative love of Jesus, like Troilus emerging into the heavens to look down at his limited loves and small piece of earth, laughing that reality was more expansive and beautiful than he had known.

The historical church felt the shock of this revelation better than we do today. It’s why Virgil, the great Latin author of The Aeneid, was the fittest guide to lead Dante through Hell and Purgatory in The Divine Comedy. He couldn’t accompany the poet through Heaven—only someone who loves Christ could do that. But he did know the pain of a world without Christ and, equally, the sharp desire for something beyond human capacity. We would do well to relearn the contours of that longing, to follow Virgil’s lead once again.

Grace Hamman is the author of Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues & Vices for a Whole & Holy Life and Jesus Through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages. Learn more about her work at gracehamman.com.

- More from Grace Hamman

Books

The Christianity Today Book Awards

CT Editors

Our picks for the books most likely to shape evangelical life, thought, and culture.

Illustration by Chris Neville

One of the great pleasures of our work at Christianity Today is getting to spend so much time with books—with the scholarly discoveries, impassioned arguments, and pastoral encouragements shaping evangelical intellectual life today.

Every year, we honor a small subset of these books in our annual CT Book Awards. Publishers submit books for consideration in one or several of our categories. Top contenders are reviewed and ranked by dozens of expert judges, including theologians, pastors, novelists, and other influential thinkers. A select group of our editors considers a handful of books for the Book of the Year and Award of Merit winners, reading in full a few titles that speak particularly to our moment.

This year, two books rose to the top in their responses to wider cultural narratives that threaten the truth, peace, and purity of God’s people. In a Western culture where institutions generally and the church particularly have fallen out of favor, we’re delighted to award the Book of the Year spot to Brad Edwards’s debut book, The Reason for Church: Why the Body of Christ Still Matters in an Age of Anxiety, Division, and Radical Individualism.

Our Award of Merit goes to Robert S. Smith’s The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory. Smith critiques the central claim of transgender theory—that the sexed body is separate from the gendered self—and lucidly points readers to the truth that we receive the bodies God gives as gifts.

May the books you encounter below prove valuable resources in your own life of the mind.

—CT editors

Book of The Year

The Reason for Church: Why the Body of Christ Still Matters in an Age of Anxiety, Division, and Radical Individualism by Brad Edwards (Zondervan Reflective)

The past few years have seen a curious pattern of skeptics announcing a newfound respect for Christianity or even converting outright. Is this revival or something like it? Perhaps it’s too soon to say. But it’s not too soon to say that the time was right for The Reason for Church. Brad Edwards’s incisive yet gracious book is apt for this moment—in which even many Christians imagine they can do without the community and obligations of a local congregation—and its call of steadfast commitment to the body of Christ will always be needful and true.

—Bonnie Kristian, deputy editor

The Reason for Church lucidly melds the vertical and horizontal reasons for going to church. There individuals learn about God, who already knows each name, and our neighbors, who often do not—nor do we know theirs. The popularity of Wendell Berry books is partly due to the yearning many of us have for small towns. Brad Edwards shows how, amid urban anonymity and suburban individualism, churches are the indispensable small towns centered on a steeple.

—Marvin Olasky, editor in chief

In a cultural moment shaped by isolation and division, Brad Edwards reminds us that God’s design for his people is essential for our flourishing and our witness.

—Scott Pace, professor of preaching and pastoral ministry at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Award of Merit

The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory by Robert S. Smith (Lexham Academic) | CT review

The Body God Gives is an expansive and compassionate book detailing how gender is grounded in biological sex. Smith has done his homework: He engages with secular gender theorists, highlighting where transgender theory has gone off course. In a world that says we are self-defined, Smith’s book makes the biblical position credible to outsiders.

—Ashley Hales, editorial director, features

Robert S. Smith has read widely among Christian and non-Christian authors on transgender issues and his response is prophetic, pastoral, and compassionate.

—Andrew Ike Shepardson, apologetics professor at Denver Seminary

Apologetics and Evangelism

Winner

The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory
by Robert S. Smith (Lexham Academic) | CT review

Award of Merit

Walking Through Deconstruction: How to Be a Companion in a Crisis of Faith by Ian Harber (IVP) | CT review

Finalists

The Gospel After Christendom: An Introduction to Cultural Apologetics edited by Collin Hansen, Skyler R. Flowers, and Ivan Mesa (Zondervan Reflective) | CT podcast episode

Every Believer Confident: Apologetics for the Ordinary Christian by Mark J. Farnham (P&R Publishing)

Biblical Studies

Winner

Jesus and the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel within First-Century Judaism by Paul T. Sloan (Baker Academic)

Paul Sloan’s thesis—that Jesus came heralding the restoration of God’s people—reframes how many have long understood (and taught about) his relationship to the law of Moses. Through careful and comprehensive analysis of Jesus’ legal teachings and interactions with his interlocutors, Sloan helps us to understand these as intramural debates over how to keep the law “in light of the dawning of the eschatological age.” Biblical scholars regard this book as an important—even field-shifting—contribution.

—Jeannine Hanger, associate professor at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University

Award of Merit

The Genuine Jesus and the Counterfeit Christs: New Testament and Apocryphal Gospels by Simon J. Gathercole (Eerdmans)

Finalists

Paul, Apostle of Grace by Frank Thielman (Eerdmans)

Thinning the Veil: Encountering Jesus Christ in the Book of Revelation
by Shane J. Wood (IVP Academic)

Bible and Devotional

Winners

Reading the Psalms as Scripture by James M. Hamilton Jr. and Matthew Damico (Lexham Press) | CT review

Reading the Psalms as Scripture transforms casual psalm reading into careful treasure hunting, equipping readers to discover the rich coherence underlying Scripture’s hymnbook.

—James Coakley, professor of Bible, Moody Bible Institute

Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness by Bobby Jamieson (WaterBrook) | CT review

A slow, searching exploration of modern life in conversation with the words of Qohelet (the “Preacher”), Everything Is Never Enough engages with Ecclesiastes through an honest, personal style, incorporating scholarship while remaining accessible. This is a very rich book indeed.

—Claire Smith, women’s Bible teacher and author of God’s Good Design

Award of Merit

The Well That Washes What It Shows: An Invitation to Holy Scripture by Jonathan A. Linebaugh (Eerdmans) | CT review

Finalist

Rhythms of Faith: A Devotional Pilgrimage Through the Church Year by Claude Atcho (WaterBrook) | CT essay

Children

Winner

The Good Shepherd and the Stubborn Sheep: A Story of God’s Redemptive Love by Hannah E. Harrison (Zonderkidz)

This book hits the humor mark with a bull’s-eye! Children will reach for it again and again to be taught and tickled through the perfectly illustrated emotion of a wayward, willful sheep. The Good Shepherd and the Stubborn Sheep is saturated with the truth of God’s long-suffering love, a reminder for young and old that we can never outrun his reach and redemption.

—Bonnie Rickner Jensen, author of Bible Stories for Kids and other Christian children’s books

Award of Merit

Painting Wonder: How Pauline Baynes Illustrated the Worlds of C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien by Katie Wray Schon (Waxwing Books)

Finalists

Jesus Our True Friend: Stories to Fill Your Heart with Joy by Sally Lloyd-Jones (Zonderkidz)

We Sing!: Teaching Kids to Praise God with Heart and Voice by Kristyn Getty (Crossway)

Young Adults

Winner

The Outsider: Ruth: A Retelling by Katy Morgan (The Good Book Company)

Katy Morgan’s third biblical retelling brings the Book of Ruth to a primary school audience with care, color, and fidelity. Scripture’s 4 pages become 158 without distortion. The added scenes, inner thoughts, and supporting figures feel historically plausible and serve the core themes of loyal love, providence, and the God who keeps his people through famine, grief, and risk.

—Mel Lacy, executive director of Growing Young Disciples

Award of Merit

Embergold by Rachelle Nelson (Enclave Publishing)

Finalists

The Gospel-Centered Community for Teens: Study Guide with Leader’s Notes by Robert H. Thune and Will Walker (New Growth Press)

The Song of the Stone Tiger by Glenn McCarty (Bandersnatch Books)

Christian Living and Spiritual Formation

Winner

Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues and Vices for a Whole and Holy Life by Grace Hamman (Zondervan Reflective)

In the medieval world, our ancestors compared the soul to a garden. In Ask of Old Paths, Grace Hamman provides the reader tools for cultivation—holy watering cans, soul shovels, sin pruning shears—and gives us discernment on which weeds to pluck and where to give fertilizer.

—Alex Sosler, associate professor of Bible and ministry at Montreat College

Award of Merit

A Teachable Spirit: The Virtue of Learning from Strangers, Enemies, and Absolutely Anyone by A. J. Swoboda (Zondervan Reflective)

Finalists

A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation by Matthew Bingham (Crossway)

The Big Relief: The Urgency of Grace for a Worn-Out World by David Zahl (Brazos Press) | CT review

Church and Pastoral Leadership

Winner

The Reason for Church: Why the Body of Christ Still Matters in an Age of Anxiety, Division, and Radical Individualism by Brad Edwards (Zondervan Reflective)

Award of Merit

Making Disciples: Catechesis in History, Theology, and Practice by Alex Fogleman (Eerdmans)

Finalists

Accessible Church: A Gospel-Centered Vision for Including People with Disabilities and Their Families by Sandra Peoples (Crossway) | CT review

Rebranding the Church: Restoring the Image of God’s People in the World by Eric Mason (Multnomah)

Culture, Poetry, and the Arts

Winner

Art Is: A Journey into the Light by Makoto Fujimura (Yale University Press)

Makoto Fujimura’s latest offering is part memoir, part artist statement, threaded with theology as creative practice. He deliberately eschews a linear argument in favor of constructing his text as he does his Nihonga paintings: with slow, allusive layers that glimmer differently in different light.

—Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt, professor of art and art history, Covenant College

Award of Merit

Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in a Digital Age edited by Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa (Crossway)

Finalists

Drawn by Beauty: Awe and Wonder in the Christian Life by Matthew Z. Capps (B&H Academic) | CT review essay

The Discipline of Inspiration: The Mysterious Encounter with God at the Heart of Creativity by Carey Wallace (Eerdmans)

Fiction

Winner

The Collector of Burned Books by Roseanna M. White (Tyndale)

The Collector of Burned Books masterfully unites historical realities with the personal drama of its characters. Centered around the Nazi occupation of Paris, the novel explores the censorship of literature and the resistance which the written word can provide not only to fascism and tyranny but also to the harmful stereotypes which even those on the correct side can fall into.

—Anthony Cirilla, associate professor of English, College of the Ozarks

Award of Merit

What the River Keeps by Cheryl Grey Bostrom (Tyndale)

Finalists

From the Valley We Rise by Elizabeth Musser (Bethany House)

The Light on Horn Island by Valerie Fraser Luesse (Revell)

History and Biography

Winner

The Beechers: America’s Most Influential Family by Obbie Tyler Todd (Louisiana State University Press) | CT review

As the Beecher clan preached to packed halls, crusaded against alcohol, led abolitionist societies, authored best-selling books, and campaigned for human rights, they lived out their shared belief in the moral power of the person to change both self and society. The Beechers excavates the deeper roots of this holistic gospel—one equally devoted to individual hearts and civic justice.

—James Strasburg, associate professor of history, Hillsdale College

Award of Merit

Abortion and America’s Churches: A Religious History of “Roe v. Wade” by Daniel K. Williams (University of Notre Dame Press) | CT review

Finalists

The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America’s First People by Matthew J. Tuininga (Oxford University Press) | CT review

Katharine Barnwell: How One Woman Revolutionized Modern Missions by Jordan K. Monson (B&H Publishing) | CT essay

Marriage, Family, and Singleness

Winner

Good News for Parents: How God Can Restore Our Joy and Relieve Our Burdens by Adam Griffin (Crossway)

In Good News for Parents, Adam Griffin addresses parents with the good news of the gospel as he takes the fruit of the Spirit and applies it to common parenting struggles. He reminds mothers and fathers of the real and moment-by-moment grace of God available in the face of what can feel like the often-impossible task of raising children.

—Heather Davis Nelson, Christian counselor and author of Rest: Creating Space for Soul Refreshment

Award of Merit

Disrupted Journey: Walking with Your Loved One Through Chronic Pain and Illness by Nate Brooks (P&R Publishing)

Finalists

Households of Faith: Practicing Family in the Kingdom of God by Emily Hunter McGowin (IVP)

The Deep-Rooted Marriage: Cultivating Intimacy, Healing, and Delight by Dan B. Allender and Steve Call (W Publishing)

Missions and the Global Church

Winner

Pieces of Purple: The Greatness, Grit, and Grace of Growing Up MK by Michèle Phoenix (independently published)

This book is a profoundly relevant resource for families who have global ministry experience. It’s a must-read for anyone who has lived internationally and those related to such a person, especially for teenage and adult children with these experiences who are navigating identity and belonging.

—Brian A. DeVries, president, Mukhanyo Theological College

Award of Merit

Serving God Under Siege: How War Transformed a Ukrainian Community by Valentyn Syniy (Eerdmans) | CT review

Finalists

Satellite Ministries: The Rise of Christian Television in the Middle East by Febe Armanios (Oxford University Press)

Reviving Mission: Awakening to the Everyday Movement of God by Linson Daniel, Jon Hietbrink, and Eric Rafferty (IVP)

Politics and Public Life | CT review

Winner

The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto by Leah Libresco Sargeant (University of Notre Dame Press) | CT review

As the subtitle suggests, The Dignity of Dependence is indeed “a feminist manifesto.” But don’t let that label determine your expectations. Leah Libresco Sargeant’s latest work is a bold yet levelheaded reimagining of what feminism can be at the same time as our market economy, professional norms, and dominant visions of the good life marginalize women—not merely through flawed theory that casts the male as default and the female as “other” but also through the practical exclusion of those who care for the vulnerable. By the book’s end, readers may find themselves asking how Sargeant’s vision ever ceased to be common sense.

—Joel Looper, author of Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity

Award of Merit

Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License by Brad Littlejohn (B&H Academic) | CT review

Finalists

When Politics Becomes Heresy: The Idol of Power and the Gospel of Christ by Tim Perry (Lexham Press) | CT review

Citizenship Without Illusions: A Christian Guide to Political Engagement by David T. Koyzis (IVP Academic)

Theology (Academic)

Winner

Prophet, Priest, and King: Christology in Global Perspective edited by Michael S. Horton, Elizabeth W. Mburu, and Justin S. Holcomb (Zondervan Academic)

This book has the very tough task of trying to socially and ethnically contextualize the wonderful, biblical truth that Christ is prophet, priest, and king across a global context. Without ever succumbing to the temptation to revert to sloppy politicized and ideological interpretations of this wonderful theme, these authors have succeeded in showing how Jesus’ profound fulfillment of these Old Testament roles has resonated throughout the world in amazing ways, across time and cultural differences.

—Marcus Johnson, professor of theology, Moody Bible Institute

Award of Merit

Contesting the Body of Christ: Ecclesiology’s Revolutionary Century by Myles Werntz (Baker Academic) | CT essay

Finalists

Joining Creation’s Praise: A Theological Ethic of Creatureliness by Brian Brock (Baker Academic)

Walking the Way of the Wise: A Biblical Theology of Wisdom by Mitchell L. Chase (IVP Academic)

Theology (Popular)

Winner

The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse by Miroslav Volf (Brazos Press) | CT review essay, CT podcast episode

Miroslav Volf offers a profound critique of competitive striving through a rich theological and philosophical lens. His writing is lucid, humane, and timely, inviting readers to reimagine ambition through the way of love.

—Tara Beth Leach, senior pastor, Good Shepherd Church

Award of Merit

Becoming God’s Family: Why the Church Still Matters by Carmen Joy Imes (IVP Academic) | CT essay

Finalists

The Nicene Creed: What You Need to Know about the Most Important Creed Ever Written by Kevin DeYoung (Crossway)

Raised in Splendor: The Hope of Glorification for a Secular Age by Jason B. Alligood (B&H Publishing)

- More from CT Editors

Books

Beyond the CT Book Award Winners

Marvin Olasky

20 more suggestions from our editor in chief.

Illustration by Christianity Today

Today CT celebrates great Christian books—and we can also learn from others. Here, two-by-two, are capsule comments on 20 books published by non-Christian houses in 2025 that educated me.

Historic Figures

Molly Worthen’s Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump (Forum) walks us through four centuries of mystery history: Some leaders gain followers by charm, but charisma is more powerful—and sometimes rational explanations for success fall short. | Listen to Worthen’s conversation with Russell Moore, and read an original essay she wrote for CT this year.

Gems of American History (Encounter) by Walter McDougall affectionally profiles pioneers from William Penn and Benjamin Franklin to the Wright brothers.

Society and Religion

In Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History (Yale University Press), Thomas Albert Howard contrasts the “passive secularism” of the First Amendment, which worked well in the United States for two centuries, with antireligious “combative secularism” and murderous “eliminationist secularism.” | Read CT’s review.

Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy (Yale) by Jonathan Rauch analyzes “thin Christianity,” 20th-century modernism ashamed of its core, and “sharp Christianity,” 21st-century Christianity in which politics edges out theology. | Read CT’s review and listen to Rauch’s conversation with Russell Moore.

Thinking About Individuality

Tomer Persico’s In God’s Image (NYU Press) traces the revolutionary idea that arose from the Bible and shaped Western civilization: Each human life is significant, and we are not just part of a clan. | Read CT’s review.

In The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life (Princeton University Press), Sophia Rosenfeld urges us to rethink both the promises and limitations of choice in a culture becoming cancerous. | Read a CT essay that draws on Rosenfeld’s work.

Wrestling with God

Eminent Jews (Henry Holt) by David Denby tells of the aggressive comedy of Mel Brooks, the torment of Leonard Bernstein, and the angst of Betty Friedan and Norman Mailer.

In Taking Religion Seriously (Encounter), formerly agnostic scholar Charles Murray explains how he came to believe in God. | Read CT’s review.

Rich and Poor

Kim Bowes in Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent (Princeton) Iiterally digs deep into artifacts to tell the stories of day laborers, slaves, farmers, and even pimps working the gig economy two millennia ago.

Class Matters (PublicAffairs) by Richard D. Kahlenberg shows how we can have diversity at universities while reducing discrimination and recrimination.

Proclaiming Liberty

Bennett Parten’s Somewhere Toward Freedom (Simon & Schuster) reveals how the Union Army’s 1864 march from Atlanta to Savannah “evolved into a profound religious experience” as 20,000 former slaves followed the soldiers.

In Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families (Simon & Schuster), Judith Giesberg details how couples separated by slave sales strove to reunite.

War and Tragedy

Iain MacGregor’s The Hiroshima Men (Scribner) describes the making and use of the first atomic bombs, the cost in lives for both Japan and the United States, and the way Japan’s leaders finally stopped sacrificing their people.

Rafael Medoff in The Road to October 7: Hamas, the Holocaust, and the Eternal War Against the Jews (Jewish Publication Society) lays out the long sorrow.

Baseball and Life

Jane Leavy offers ways to increase baseball action in Make Me Commissioner (Grand Central), such as by topping off outfield walls with 18-foot-high Plexiglas, NHL arena style.

Will Bardenwerper’s Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America (Doubleday) argues that minor league ballparks are still places where community grows, with “evening shadows advancing toward the infield as that familiar feeling of serenity slowly swept over us.”

Please, Mr. Postman

Stephen Starring Grant’s Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home (Simon & Schuster) reports with humor and compassion his time as a rural letter carrier.

In Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed (Princeton), Eric H. Cline explores the mail some pharaohs received from 1360 to 1334 BC.

Dinosaurs and Birds

King Tyrant (Princeton) by Mark P. Witton is an authoritative book for adults about Tyrannosaurus rex—and its pictures of dinosaurs in combat can fascinate children as adults read to them at bedtime about the bad old days.

Roger Pasquier’s Birds at Rest: The Behavior and Ecology of Avian Sleep (Princeton) is far more peaceful.

Marvin Olasky is editor in chief of Christianity Today. Since 2022, he has reviewed both general and Christian books in a monthly free newsletter, OlaskyBooks. You can sign up here.

- More from Marvin Olasky

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Christianity in East and Southeast Asia, edited by Kenneth R. Ross, Francis D. Alvarez and Todd M. Johnson

Mangoes or Bananas? The Quest for an Authentic Asian Christian Theology, by Hwa Yung

Clean Hands, Pure Hearts & Beautiful Feet, by Flora Man and Emily Soh

Neighboring Faiths: A Christian Introduction to World Religions, by Winfried Corduan

Good News for Bruised Reeds: Walking with Same-Sex Attracted Friends, edited by Joanna Hor, Ng Zhi-Wen, Bernice Tan, Tan Soo-Inn, Ronald JJ Wong, and Raphael Zhang

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Book of The Year

Award of Merit

Apologetics and Evangelism

Winner

Award of Merit

Finalists

Biblical Studies

Winner

Award of Merit

Finalists

Bible and Devotional

Winners

Award of Merit

Finalist

Children

Winner

Award of Merit

Finalists

Young Adults

Winner

Award of Merit

Finalists

Christian Living and Spiritual Formation

Winner

Award of Merit

Finalists

Church and Pastoral Leadership

Winner

Award of Merit

Finalists

Culture, Poetry, and the Arts

Winner

Award of Merit

Finalists

Fiction

Winner