December 4, 2024

The (Bigger and Better) CT Book Awards

In my own, only mildly biased reckoning, the Christianity Today Book Awards qualify as a good thing. Which means, by the immutable laws of science and logic, that having more of the Christianity Today Book Awards must qualify as an even better thing.

For context, we need a quick Book Awards history lesson. Up until this year, I had a set pattern for structuring the presentation of the awards. Of the four or five judges assigned to each category, I would choose comments from only two to include in the final feature: one paragraph praising the winning title, and another praising the runner-up.

This time around, I asked myself: Why not include comments from all the judges? After all, they’ve put in the work. They’ve read hundreds of pages, wrestled with substantial arguments (and often heavy-duty scholarship), and written up their impressions. Don’t they all deserve some share of the spotlight?

In raw terms, of course, this meant taking an editorial product that was already quite long and making it dramatically longer. (You ought to see the behind-the-scenes labor that goes into preparing it for the web.) But I’m confident, in this instance, that the adage “less is more” gets things backwards.

Anyhow, why not click through and see for yourself?

CT’s Book of the Year

In our main Book Awards categories, the judges come from outside CT. I recruit pastors, theologians, academics, writers, and others who bring Christian wisdom and subject-specific expertise to the judging task.

But CT’s choice for Book of the Year runs on a parallel track. Here, the opinions that count belong to editors on staff, including myself. Our decisions don’t always mirror those made elsewhere within the Book Awards landscape, and those divergences can create confusion among readers who assume that the whole contest operates like the NCAA’s March Madness bracket, where you can’t compete for the championship after being knocked out in an earlier round.

Our top honoree, Gavin Ortlund’s What It Means to Be Protestant, was also a category winner (in popular theology). Our runner-up, Brad East’s Letters to a Future Saint, was a finalist in its own category (Christian Living/Spiritual Formation), but the category judges favored other finalists in the aggregate.

Does that make it an odd fit on our Book of the Year podium? Only if you’re beholden to the notion that any group of reasonably thoughtful Christians will invariably reach an identical consensus on any book under consideration. And my experience tallying Book Awards results has confirmed, again and again, that this notion is flatly, hilariously untrue.

But enough table-setting. Go ahead and check out what our editors had to say about these two fine books. And don’t miss the opportunity to watch us converse with their authors next Thursday, December 12, via the magic of YouTube Live. (Come for the insights on Christianity in contemporary life. Stay for the chance to point and laugh when I embarrass myself trying to navigate this novel technology!)

Matt Reynolds

Senior Editor, Books

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in the magazine

As this issue hits your mailboxes after the US election and as you prepare for the holidays, it can be easy to feel lost in darkness. In this issue, you’ll read of the piercing light of Christ that illuminates the darkness of drug addiction at home and abroad, as Angela Fulton in Vietnam and Maria Baer in Portland report about Christian rehab centers. Also, Carrie McKean explores the complicated path of estrangement and Brad East explains the doctrine of providence. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt shows us how art surprises, delights, and retools our imagination for the Incarnation, while Jeremy Treat reminds us of an ancient African bishop’s teachings about Immanuel. Finally, may you be surprised by the nearness of the “Winter Child,” whom poet Malcolm Guite guides us enticingly toward. Happy Advent and Merry Christmas.

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