The year 2020, for me started off in wonder, anticipation and joy. The first eight weeks included preparation for and the experience of the visiting Y’s and sacred sites in the Holy Land with the YMCA OnPrinciple cohort.
Upon returning, the rumblings of the COVID pandemic could no longer be ignored, and within weeks we were in lockdown, quarantined at home, facing unprecedented uncertainties.
My vocation, my work with the YMCA, and my family situation gave me strategic time to read. Three themes intersected: how to strengthen the Christian presence of the YMCA, how to do this in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) reality with the pandemic and economic disruption, amidst resurgence of overdue racial inequity protests across the country. All this hardship exacerbated by the outrageous, slanderous, inflammatory politic rhetoric by irresponsible power-mongers.
How did we get here, what is next? Christianly? Racially? Politically? Morally? Economically? Religious & Spiritually? For the YMCA? For the Church?
Based on material I had been reading for years, and shaped by timely recommendations of trusted friends, here is my reading list for 2020, in my striving to gain wisdom and nurture redemption in our chaotic, dangerous, yet beautiful world.
I’d be glad for more recommendations of what to read in 2021.
Tim’s 2020 Top Ten Books
( * = unfinished / + = reread portions annually)
Revolutionary theology integrating Christian reflections of Rene Girard for our culture and mimetic realities.
Raw, candid, wise, hopeful meditations by a black preacher for his black congregation, a world leader writing out how to survive as a black Christian in early 20th century America.
What’s going on with the withering of Protestant Christianity in America? Tillich asks tough questions, he digs deep into the beliefs and practices which are shaping our seeming decline.
A hopeful and grounded vision of how Christians in the church can be participants in the flourishing of their community.
Provocative; a unique, refreshing yet disturbing take on how Christians can embody our Lord Jesus in the dark realities of this American culture.
Brilliant insights of the early 20th century that still resonate today for how Christians leverage their power for the gospel and their community. Shaped by the horrors of the Great War and emerging Nazism, this is crucial content that needs to be re-engaged and adapted for us now.
Poetic, empathetic, brutally honest, searching, yearning, wounded; a hard look at reality for a talented black man in a Christian country.
It’s connected with the storyline of To Kill A Mockingbird, but it stands on its own. A fascinating yet rough read, if you let it be, for upending assumptions and opening up disturbing realities about oneself.
I’ll never be the same. Literal tears stain the pages of my book.
A history for which I know to little, and from what I do think I know, I now know reality is much more complex, painful, and yet hopeful. A genuinely unique story, and a very good one.
My third time reading it, this time to prepare for my trip to the Holy Land again, this tine with the YMCA. The storyline, the scope of the ages, the humanity, the cultures – while there is much to critique, it does provide a humbling yet awe inspiring take on our humanity, our faith, and our future.
Out of the 60+ books I read this year (or reread, or started, finished, or read partially) here’s the second half of the top twenty:
Strategic Doing, by Ed Morrison – practical system for community collaboration, especially in a VUCA world; rich, thoughtful, humane, successful content.
Letters from the Desert, by Carlos Caretto – spiritual reflections from a real man in the real world, with a European perspective in the north African wilderness.
*A Palestinian Cry for Reconciliation, by Naim Stifan Ateek – passionate liberation theology of Christian leaders striving against impossible odds to do God’s will with love towards their enemies and justice for all.
The Death of Race, by Brian Bantum – the personal and probing theologizing opens up for me ways that race and Christianity are intimately intertwined in America, of ways forward, in Christ.
*The Kingdom of God in America, by Reinhold Niebuhr – a step back into time, when American Christian theologians work with the Church Fathers, Greek philosophers, European theologians, to address our pragmatic US political and religious culture, shaped deeply by the Great War, the Great Depression, and the aftershocks of the Enlightenment- which is still the case in 2020, just more complicated.
*Christianity and Civilisation, by Emil Brunner – a fresh, rejuvenating European take on ways Christendom has shaped our world, and how to move forward; a fan of the YMCA and one who eloquently writes out the implicit beliefs of the Y.
*The End of History and The Last Man, by Franics Fukuyama – still relevant, still insightful, still necessary reading to make sense of 2020.
Be The Bridge, by Latasha Morrison – a crucial Christian contribution to the personal and cultural work of racial reconciliation; it is personal, practical, hopeful.
*For The Life of the World, by Alexander Schnemamm – an American Russian Orthodox priest and professor making accessible the beauty and compelling theotic reality of the Eucharist for life in American culture.
The Great Bridge, by David McCullough – gritty story of genius and corrupt New York characters building the enduring Brooklyn Bridge. A great tale of greatness in early American civilization.
Bonus: The Evening and the Morning, by Ken Follett – I love these tales of cathedrals, the loving attention to detail of the structures, the history, and the people who you grow to admire, root for, and hate. This prequel was unexpected, and a pure delight.
For the final set of the top thirty:
Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now, by Maya Angelou
+The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, Richard Rohr
+The Wisdom of the Enneagram, by Russ Hudson and Don Riso
+Mortal Beauty, God’s Grace, poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Mother Jones, by Judith Pinkerton Josephson
+Strength to Love, by MLKJr
+Voices, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
A Spirituality of Fundraising, by Henri Nouwen
*From Beiruit To Jerusalem, by Thomas Friedman
*Jerusalem: A Biography, by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Bonus: Faith for Living, by Lewis Mumford
Other Books I Enjoyed Reading in 2020:
*Social Ethics and the Return to Cosmology: A Study of Gibson Winter by Moni McIntyre
*From Land to Lands, by Munther Isaac
+I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightening, by Rene Girard
*Love Does, by Bob Goff
+What Are People For, by Wendell Berry
Militia Christi, by Adolf Von Harnack
*Faith on Earth, by H. Richard Niebuhr
*Hermeneutics and Criticism, by Friedrich Schleiermacher
In The Name of Sanity, by Lewis Mumford
*Reason for Being, by Jacques Ellul
The Christian Intellectual; Fools for Christ, by Jaroslav Pelikan
*Character of Community, by Stanley Hauerwas
*Social Sources of Denominations; The Irony of American History, by Reinhold Niebuhr
*Political Order and Political Decay, by Francis Fukuyama
*The Fire This Time, by Jesmyn Ward
*Gilkey on Tillich; *Naming the Whirlwind, by Langdon Gilkey
*Sacred Rhythms, by Ruth Haley Barton
+Seasons of Life; +Guilt and Grace; +The Healing of Persons, by Dr. Paul Tournier
What We Talk About When We Talk About God; Drops Like Stars, by Rob Bell
*Spirituality, a Very Short Introduction, by Philip Sheldrake
Canoeing the Mountains, by Tod Bolsinger
*Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
*Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
+The Divine Hours: Autumn Edition & Christmastide, by Phyllis Tickle
+Works of Love, by Soren Kierkegaard
FICTION
Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith
*Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
a dozen Jack Reacher novels, by Lee Childs
a half-dozen Sherlock Holmes short stories, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
*The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
*1984, by George Orwell
*The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Doestevsky
