The mission of Good Faith Media is to provide “reflection and resources at the intersection of faith and culture through an inclusive Christian lens.” Our mission leans into the belief that we can find the fingerprints of God wherever we look, as well as in those places where we don’t often think to look. This encompasses artistic realms where discerning creators grapple with profound questions about humanity’s purpose, the essence of love and the search for hope and healing, among many others.
With 2023 coming to a close, we asked our team of writers, editors and contributing correspondents to reflect on the books they found especially meaningful this year. The following is a list of their selections.
Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day
by Kaitlin B. Curtice
Kaitlin Curtice has written exhaustively about how deconstructing her evangelical Christian upbringing has allowed her to connect with the Indigenous traditions of her ancestors. In this timely book, Curtice examines how those ancient practices might help us to engage resistance in new, healthy ways. She invites us to reimagine resistance through the lens of four realms: personal, communal, ancestral and integral. She also connects those realms to the energies of the four seasons, allowing her readers to better understand the practice’s energy. Curtice hopes that by engaging in these practices, readers will be better equipped to nourish their own and their neighbors’ holistic flourishing. – KCF
Poverty, By America
by Matthew Desmond (Crown)
Matthew Desmond’s 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” highlighted a hidden industry that thrives on the eviction of renters in America’s urban centers. This 2023 follow-up expands the subject’s horizon by asking, “Why does persistent poverty exist?” Desmond’s answer is simple and damning: It exists because those who don’t experience poverty benefit from its existence. Having grown up as a preacher’s kid, Desmond is familiar with hope, and he offers that hope here for all with the will to seize on it. – CN
Divine Rivals
by Rebecca Ross (Wednesday Books)
Acclaimed fantasy author Rebecca Ross released her highly-anticipated seventh book, “Divine Rivals,” in April 2023. “Divine Rivals” immerses readers into a WWI-inspired world infused with mythology. Readers follow Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt, two young journalists brought together under circumstances reminiscent of the 1998 film “You’ve Got Mail,” but with a magical twist. These two unlikely allies find themselves on the front lines of a war between gods as correspondents to locate Iris’ missing brother. “Divine Rivals” grapples with war-time trauma, addiction, poverty, propaganda and discovering family. This is the first part of a new duology series. – CC
Take Me to the Water
by Starlette Thomas (Nurturing Faith Books)
Rev. Dr. Starlette Thomas’ book, “Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church,” deconstructs the concept of race as a human creation. Thomas demonstrates how race segregates the church by color instead of unifying unique cultures under baptism’s redeeming and renewing waters.
For too long, the Christian church consented to the false mythology of a “white-faced” God. In doing so, the church allowed white supremacy to dominate the theology and practice of the faith. Thomas challenges the contemporary church to remember Peter: “Get out of the boat because you didn’t join a church. You entered a body of water.”
Thomas skillfully reveals how the concept of race harms the Christian witness, leading to segregation and partisanship. Instead, Thomas advocates for a faith needing to return to the baptismal waters. She writes: “Baptism cuts us off from the flesh, its alliances and allegiances, and the self-gratification of power and prestige.” – MR
Inanna
by Emily Wilson (Titan)
Fantasy, fiction and ancient belief systems all come into play in Emily Wilson’s “Inanna,” billed as volume one in “The Sumerians” trilogy. Long before Marduk and Ishtar rose to power among the gods in Babylon, the gods and heroes of Sumer were vying for survival and supremacy. Wilson draws from a mix of Mesopotamian myths and legends to spin an imaginative tale loosely associated with the ancient “Gilgamesh Epic,” the original story of a questing hero. Readers familiar with “Gilgamesh” in both its Sumerian and Babylonian versions may be frustrated with some of the liberties Wilson takes with the story. However, such is the work of a novelist transforming an epic of just 3,200 known lines (whole or broken) into a series of three thick volumes. She’s off to a good start. – TC
Contributors Include:
Tony Cartledge, contributing editor and Nurturing Faith curriculum writer
Kali Cawthon-Freels, contributing correspondent
Cally Chisholm, creative coordinator
Craig Nash, senior editor
Mitch Randall, chief executive officer
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Reflection and resources at the intersection of faith and culture through an inclusive Christian lens.
