Christianity Today

January/February, 2022

Volume 66, Number 1

March, 2022
The Gospel of Advent

For all the alarms sounded today over declining reading habits, and for all the fears that social-media shallowness has crowded out serious thinking, people still make a big deal of books. We buy them and read them. We discuss and debate them. And we still sense that the deepest, most enduring truths about God and man, about history and contemporary life, are found not on Twitter threads but on the printed page. This is one reason we’re dedicating the bulk of this issue not only to our annual Book Awards but also to books themselves, in the form of excepts from awards finalists (and several winners) that shine a light on some of the finest Christian thinking happening today.

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Cover Story

Cover Story

Christianity Today’s 2022 Book Awards

Compiled by Matt Reynolds

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

Features

Excerpt

The Cosmos Is More Crowded Than You Think

Tish Harrison Warren

How an old prayer and a newborn baby changed my perspective on angels.

Henrietta Mears, the Improbable Evangelical Leader

Arlin C. Migliazzo

A new biography shows the Sunday school teacher played a key role in the movement, and the directions its leaders took.

John Stott’s Global God

Christopher J. H. Wright

The evangelical leader invested resources in Christian leaders around the world. Now those leaders are blessing the Western church.

Are the Arts a Tool, a Temptation, or a Distraction?

Terry Glaspey

In “Discovering God Through the Arts,” Terry Glaspey says Christians haven’t always been suspicious of creative expression.

Evangelicals Have Made The Trinity a Means to an End. It’s Time to Change That.

Matthew Barrett

For 2,000 years, church leaders held to the same Trinitarian doctrine. How did we lose our way?

How White Rule Ended in Missions

F. Lionel Young III

Western missionaries championed racial equality abroad while struggling with it in their own ranks.

Blessed Are Those Who Embody the Beautitudes

Rebekah Eklund

As we search for meaning in the “blessings,” we must let them transform us.

Testimony

I Entered Prison a ‘Protestant.’ I Left a Christian.

David Hamilton

How a violent Northern Ireland loyalist became a pastor and an evangelist.

If I Had to Bow to an Idol, It Would Be the Sun

No other created object tells us more about the real God.

How to Disagree Nicely but Not Lose Your Convictions

Tim Muelhoff and Richard Langer

Everything is not a biblical issue—but who decides?

Excerpt

Black Christians Are Confronting Black Lies About Christianity

Eric Mason

How urban apologetics contends against the distortions promoted by “Black Conscious” movements.

Parents Set the Pace for Their Adult Children’s Religious Life

Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk

“Handing Down the Faith” shows a vast majority of Americans don’t choose their religious beliefs. They inherit them.

Excerpt

The Poet Who Prepared the Ground for the Sexual Revolution

Carl Trueman

Percy Shelley’s 19th-century attacks on marriage, monogamy, and Christianity foreshadowed progressive attitudes today.

More from this Issue

Our Jan/Feb Issue: Words in the Wild

Our books issue offers a jungle of Christian ideas to lose yourself in.

Reply All

Responses to our November issue.

News

News

As COVID-19 Death Tolls Rise, More Americans Want Religious Funerals

The trend toward secular memorials reverses for the first time in a decade.

News

How Black Missionaries Are Being Written Back into the Story

Rebecca Hopkins

Will fixing inaccurate representation encourage more minorities to “go into all the world”?

News

Illinois Eliminated Parole in 1978. These Christians Want to Bring it Back.

Kathryn Watson

A belief that people can change bolsters their movement.

News

Gleanings: January 2022

News from Christians around the world.

Reviews

Learning to Love Your Limits

Interview by Erin Straza

Our overburdened lives are often a problem of theology, not time management.

Review

Well Done, Good and Faithful Missionary

David Gustafson

Paul wasn’t shy about seeking God’s approval of his work. Elliot Clark wants us to recover that sense of motivation.

Additional Articles

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