Radical Love Book List – Plymouth Church

Practice Radical Love Book List

Books for all of the pillars, including some great ones to learn more about practicing Justice.

Bread for the Resistance: Forty Devotions for Justice People

By: Donna Barber

Sometimes you get tired, doing this thing we call justice. Making the case, fighting the fight, having to explain again and again why it matters. You feel burned out or disillusioned. Sometimes you just need a word from the Lord. In these daily devotions, Donna Barber offers life-giving words of renewal and hope for those engaged in the resistance to injustice.

Defiant

By: Kelley Nikondeha

What the Women of Exodus Teach us about Freedom (2020) Defiant is about the deep work women do to create conditions for liberation in their church, community, and country. The women of Exodus defied Pharaoh, raised Moses, and plundered Egypt. Nikondeha presents a fresh paradigm for women, highlighting a biblical mandate to join the liberation work in our world.

Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

By: Nadia Bolz-Weber

Accidental Saints (2016) invites readers into a surprising encounter with what Bolz-Weber calls “a religious but not-so-spiritual life.” But God keeps showing up in the least likely of people—a church-loving agnostic, a drag queen, a felonious Bishop and a gun-toting member of the NRA.

Everything Happens for a Reason

By: Kate Bowler

Frank and funny, dark and wise, Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. It tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live.

Those Who Wait

By: Tanya Marlow

Those Who Wait: Finding God in Disappointment, Doubt, and Delay (2017) Marlow writes about four Bible heroes who waited impatiently: Sarah, Isaiah, John the Baptist, and Mary. Through gripping storytelling, we immerse ourselves in their lives. We find empathy for our disappointment and doubt. We find perspective and purpose in delay. Above all, we find God in the waiting.

I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation

By: Chanequa Walker-Barnes

Refuting the idea that race and racism are “one-size-fits-all,” I Bring the Voices of My People highlights the particular work that White Americans must do to repent of racism and to work toward racial justice and offers a constructive view of reconciliation that prioritizes eliminating racial injustice and healing the damage that it has done to African Americans and other people of color.

Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

By: Rachel Held Evans

If the Bible isn’t a science book or an instruction manual, then what is it? What do people mean when they say the Bible is inspired? When Rachel Held Evans found herself asking these questions, she began a quest to better understand what the Bible is and how it is meant to be read. What she discovered changed her—and it will change you too.

Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi

By: Amy Jill-Levine

In this wise, entertaining, and educational book, Amy-Jill Levine offers a fresh, timely reinterpretation of Jesus’ narratives. In Short Stories by Jesus, she analyzes these “problems with parables,” taking readers back in time to understand how their original Jewish audience understood them. Levine reveals the parables’ connections to first-century economic and agricultural life, social customs and morality, Jewish scriptures and Roman culture.

Practice Radical Love Podcasts

Podcasts are another way to expand your knowledge and experience new voices. You can find these on your favorite podcast apps. Here are a few to explore: