My Top Ten Books of 2024

With notes on the joyful practice of reading actual books

Each year I make a goal of reading at least 52 books — one per week. I generally read in four categories: project reading (tied to a book I am writing), class reading (tied to a class I am teaching), fiction reading (tied to the Classic Book Club that my wife and I lead), and general nonfiction reading as my interests direct me.

In 2024 I read 66 books, something of a record for me in recent years. The project I was working on was my already published book offering a Christian defense of liberal democracy — Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies. I lectured in many places in 2024 about this theme, and was working my way through lots of background reading to be as conversant with the historic and contemporary literature as possible. A few of the books that make my top 10 in 2024 came from that reading.

I would not be reading as many novels as I do if it were not for the book club that my wife designed and that we have led together in Atlanta for over 15 years. But I always feel enriched by the experience of encountering brilliant writers as they create narrative worlds and take us into them. I truly believe my thinking as both a pastor and scholar is constantly enriched by reading these great works of fiction.

I mainly read e-books only when they come to me as pdf manuscripts seeking endorsement. Two of the books on my list this year fell in this category. In general, though, I much, much prefer to hold hard copy books in my hands, to mark them up with pencil or pen, to carry them around with me from place to place.

I noted with chagrin last year that my concentration for reading books had waned a bit. I attribute part of that to social media, the way it distracted me, had me itchy to get my hands on my phone to see the latest news or inquiry/response to me. Wanting to be free from this foreshortening of my attention span is one reason — only one — for why I shut down my social media accounts in November.

Here is my top 10 list from 2024. I have not attempted to rank them from 1 to 10. They were all great reads. I commend them to you.

1. For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church. Edited by David Bentley Hart and John Chryssavgis. This succinct, lovely statement of (Eastern) Orthodox social teachings was a new discovery for me in 2023. I added it to my ethics survey courses to enrich the reading offerings with a voice that most Protestant seminarians have never encountered. It is an excellent teaching tool and a fine reference guide. My students and I don’t agree with every word but we value this reading a great deal.

2. Christabel. By Christabel Bielenberg. Also available under other names in other editions. Christabel Bielenberg was an Englishwoman who married a German man in early 1930s Germany. Her memoir powerfully describes the choice they made to stay in Germany after Hitler came to power, what it was like in Nazi Germany, and the terrifying chaos and threats to their family when the war years came. In a sense the book is a warning: things can seem safe and secure in a country, until that safety and security disappear in a flash. Affairs of state can seem very far away, until they come home to everyone. This is not a new book. But its implications are fresh indeed.

3. Onward Forward —My Journey with ALS. By Brian Jeansonne. Brian is the son of an old pastor friend of mine, who asked me to read Brian’s memoir for endorsement. Brian is in a very advanced stage of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). He has no use of his hands. The technology he used to write this book has to be read to be believed. This is a book by a post-evangelical (Vineyard Church) pastor who has been seared by suffering so profoundly that every single truism, every single complacent word of Christian comfort and theology, has been obliterated. Yet he is attempting to make meaning of his experience. The book is terribly raw. Crude. Angry. Beautiful. Sad. It’s like Job, on steroids. Unforgettable.

4. The English Soul: Faith of a Nation. By Peter Ackroyd. The eminent historian offers brisk profiles of major figures in English religious history. His goal is not just to offer biographical sketches but to try something more ambitious — to describe “the English soul” as it has evolved over many centuries. This subject is important to me as my wife and I now split our time between Atlanta and a home in the Cotswolds part of England. There I am already having the lovely opportunity to volunteer my services in local churches. This book helps me understand the long religious history that helped to shape the community in which we now live and serve.

5. Illiberal America: A History. By Steven Hahn. The distinguished historian reviews the history of illiberalism in American politics, showing that it is the permanent shadow side of our national life. The chapters take the reader into various more and less familiar episodes of illiberalism throughout our history, most of them tied to an exclusionist and even expulsionist impulse on the part of white US Christians. I wrote a piece in Baptist News Global before the election in which I summarized the grim message of htis book in one title: “Illiberal America Has Won Many Times Before.” Yes, it has. This is long-form history writing at its best.

6. The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors. By John W. Compton. I was so impressed by this deep sociological study of the rise and fall of the Protestant social conscience in the 20th century that I wrote a lengthy piece on it here after the election. It is my most-cited piece in the last year. You just have to read this book if you want to understand this country as of 2025 and where religion fits in.

7. Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich. By Richard J. Evans. In this riveting book, released in August of 2024, one of the world’s leading historians of Nazi Germany offers a longish new biographical sketch of Adolf Hitler and then shorter ones of two dozen or so Nazi leaders. I learned a very great deal from this book about specific infamous figures such as Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann, Heinrich Himmler, and less familiar names. I was reminded of something I discovered thirty years ago when doing my dissertation on the Holocaust. War criminals do not begin life as war criminals. They get there after a long journey, involving the interaction of their personality with social conditions and radicalized governments. Certainly, one must watch out for who gets appointed to major government posts. But we must watch out even more for what policies such people are unleashed to implement.

8. The Gate of Angels. By Penelope Fitzgerald. This brilliant novelist came to novel writing under financial necessity and very late in life. Her voice is unique. I cannot compare her to anyone else I have read. She is witty, elliptical, sardonic, descriptive but leaving much to the imagination. This book describes life at a Cambridge college just before the Great War, and introduces us to two winning, hapless characters who accidentally and quite literally collide on a Cambridge street. If you like this book, follow it up with The Blue Flower, set in early 19th century Germany — completely absorbing in its own way.

9. Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation. By Cara Meredith. The last two books on my list are not out yet — they were happy surprises from the year’s many endorsement opportunities. This one, out in late April, takes the reader into the evangelical church camp subculture. It is another important contribution to the memoir/investigative reportage post-evangelical literature of this generation. If you ever went to an evangelical church camp, you will want to read this one.

10. The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism. By Holly Berkley Fletcher. This book, not out until August 2025, is an astonishing book in the same genre — memoir/investigative report. The author takes the reader into the difficult world of the missionary kid — the MK. This was her own experience, and she has plenty of stories to tell, but she also does considerable interviewing and investigative reporting. I won’t say more because spoiler alert. But let’s just say that young post-evangelicals are exploding myths and exposing dangers in the white evangelical subculture, helping us understand in far more detail what exactly has gone wrong and why 20 million souls have now left.

Bonus Round: I am beginning 2025 with this book: The Triumph of Life, by Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg. Rabbi Greenberg, now 91 years old (!), was a legendary figure in Jewish and ecumenical theological circles already at the time I was writing my dissertation at Union Seminary in New York in the late 1980s. It was such a gift to have him on my dissertation committee. His reflections on the Holocaust were some of the most profound that I read, and I read that sad literature exhaustively. This book, his long-awaited magnum opus, is opening with tremendous power and depth. I look forward to seeing what he has to say. I am inspired and grateful that his voice is still among us.

Thank you, subscribers and followers, for listening to what I have to say. I wish you a happy new year!