Where faith and life intersect
Pastor Abi has some books she’d love to share with you this Summer! You choose which book(s) you’d like to read, and you choose which book(s) you’d like to discuss with Pastor Abi and with others.
One night each month, Pastor Abi will hang out at one of the restaurants in our neighborhood and if you show up that night, you can join her for a discussion of the book and what it means for our faith and life.
The Schedule
Discussion are Thursday nights at 7 PM
- June 13 (Big Buns) – Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
- July 18 (Ned Devine’s Irish Gastropub) – Why I Left, Why I Stayed by Tony and Bart Campolo
- August 22 (Pierro’s Italian Restaurant) – Take This Bread by Sara Miles
- September 26 (Ned Devine’s Irish Gastropub) – Transforming by Austen Hartke
Here Are the Books…
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing”. But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear - and are influenced by - every single day.
Why I Left, Why I Stayed: Conversations on Christianity Between an Evangelical Father and His Humanist Son
A dialogue between an evangelical pastor and his humanist son: “Rarely are questions of faith genuinely debated with [such] sincerity, insight, and compassion.” —Bryan Stevenson, New York Times–bestselling author of Just Mercy
Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles
Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and a writer. Then early one winter morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. “I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian,” she writes, “or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut.” But she ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed. The mysterious sacrament of communion has sustained Miles ever since, in a faith she’d scorned, in work she’d never imagined.
Transforming: The Bible & the Lives of Transgender Christians by Austen Hartke
In 2014, Time magazine announced that America had reached “the transgender tipping point,” suggesting that transgender issues would become the next civil rights frontier. Years later, many people—even many LGBTQIA+ allies—still lack understanding of gender identity and the transgender experience. Into this void, trans biblical scholar Austen Hartke brings a biblically based, educational, and affirming resource to shed light and wisdom on gender expansiveness and Christian theology.