Jason Byassee's Christmas list

To give

How did Father Martin hock this book to Harper? “I want to write a commentary with my personal take on the gospels after you send me to Israel. It’ll be nearly 600 pages.” I bought Jesus: A Pilgrimage in order to prepare for my own upcoming pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I intended to skip most of those pages but became engrossed. Martin reads scripture with joy, surprise, humility, and deep insight. The printing of the biblical passage after each meditation made me wonder if we preachers should read the scripture after talking about it.

S. C. Gwynne made professional historians crazy mad (or maybe just crazy jealous) with his book Empire of the Sum­mer Moon. Now he’s written Rebel Yell: The Violence, Pas­sion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson. I live in a part of the country where the war isn’t really over (a parishioner claims to have the rifle that fired the first shot in Stoneman’s Raid at the end of the war). Our recent politics show that matters of violence, redemption, and what it means to be a white Southerner are as contentious as ever.