3 Books Take On Need For Faith And Community In Time For The Holidays
(REVIEW) Books about Christianity, morality and community are nothing new. While the world — especially the West, like the United States and Europe — becomes more secular, there seems to be a cottage industry that continues to churn out books aimed at religious people.
Three titles, out now wherever books are sold, highlight this trend. All three have something in common — they take on the human desire for community through the lens of faith in our ever-secular world dominated by technology and self-absorption.
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Just in time for Thanksgiving, here are three such books for your consideration:
‘Go Home for Dinner’
A self-help book from former Vice President Mike Pence?
“Go Home for Dinner” could be seen as just that, but it’s much more. Part self-help and part advice, this book offers up practical solutions about how people can pursue their dreams while keeping their family close.
It’s a moral choice Pence made for his family, despite holding political office for so many decades.
The book’s title comes from something a young Pence would tell reporters who asked him where he saw himself in five to 10 years.
“Home for dinner,” he would reply.
The answer, Pence notes, was an honest assessment of his priorities. As a result, Pence has been adamant about putting his family first, often telling his staff that he’d rather lose an election than his family.
Through the use of short chapters, Pence, who recently dropped out of the 2024 Republican presidential primaries, uses this 243-page book to recount his own childhood, where he grew up Catholic and later became an evangelical Christian, to his time as a husband and father.
Despite the changes in his life, the dinner table remained a focal point for Pence throughout this book. This is increasingly becoming a challenge in our modern world, where cell phones make it easier to communicate with everyone but those physically around you.
“Being ‘home for dinner’ is about more than eating together,” Pence writes. “It means being present in the lives of family members and making a conscious effort not to be distracted when you are with them.”
‘Rumors of a Better Country: The Search for Trust in a Time of Moral Outrage’
We live in a self-absorbed world and a society that, now more than ever, is in the throes of widespread consumerism. This consumption, coupled with hyper-individualism, often comes at the expense of community and the common good. The advent of social media has made this more evident than ever by placing a spotlight on such narcissistic urges.
Is humanity facing an identity crisis? That’s what “Rumors of a Better Country: The Search for Trust in a Time of Moral Outrage,” a new book by author Marsh Moyle, tries to answer in this thought-provoking work.
The 306-page book takes the reader on an adventure that includes Moyle’s time in Central Europe, when communism crushed peoples’ will and freedom was nonexistent. Moyle looks back at that era in recent history with an eye on the present, not in a political way but a moral one.
“The communist period in Central Europe showed that an over-emphasis on the communal could crush the personal. But in the Western world, a growing individualism has led to a crisis of loneliness and identity,” Moyle notes. “Neither provides an adequate framework to describe or answer human needs.”
Moyle writes from experience. During the Cold War, he and his wife, Tuula, organized book translation and distribution behind the Iron Curtain. In the post-communist years, the couple helped people set up publishing houses and engaged in research on a variety of social issues.
Where do we go from here? Moyle writes that “a moral framework” is needed.
“How can the communal and personal be held in a healthy tension that benefits both, respecting each person’s uniqueness and the common good? The question is essential to the search for a better country,” he writes.
In fact, this book addresses the human desire for justice and a better way of life by attempting to awaken our moral imagination to the potential of a trusting community. Ultimately, this comes from God and the Ten Commandments.
“The Decalogue,” Moyle writes, “is as much an expression of his character as it is a call on our behavior. It points to goodness that makes absolute power safe because it is not self-absorbed, but intent on the goodness and benefit of the other.”
Moyle, knowing that secularism and not religious faith is the norm in the West, makes the following astute observation that readers need to contend with: “Believing in a morally good, personal and infinite God is a step too far for some readers. I understand that and would not expect it to be otherwise in a society steeped in a century of naturalism. I hope I’ve given enough reasons to entertain at least the possibility that God, freedom and goodness are not necessarily in opposition but might even be connected.”
‘The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again’
Another book seeking to make sense of the world is “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God.” Not only does it attempt to do that, but it offers a hopeful Christian message in its 251 pages.
If G.K. Chesterton had been alive today, he might have offered up this famous phrase of his as a blurb for the back of the book: “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”
The rise of secularism and technology have not helped Christianity over the last 100 years, yet author and podcaster Justin Brierley makes a counterargument in this book: He’s seeing a rise in people converting to Christianity in recent years and even atheists who yearn for a less-secular society.
Brierley writes that notable public figures such as Jordan Peterson, Tom Holland, Dave Rubin and several others have found themselves surprised by the “continuing resonance and relevance of Christianity” — and joining others in on conversations about faith.
Whether or not you believe Christianity will make a comeback — and statistics show it isn’t — this book will leave you with a sense that God may have a sense of humor. In the end, this stimulating book may very well have you going back to church on Sunday in the hope that others do as well.
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Clemente Lisi is the executive editor at Religion Unplugged. He is the author of “The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet’s Biggest Sporting Event” and previously served as deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and a longtime reporter at The New York Post. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.