It is important to find ways to rest this summer, knowing that when autumn arrives, your desk will be plenty full with books to read and papers to write. We also know that many in our community enjoy curling up with a good book in the sun to read and reflect. So, we asked students, faculty, staff, and alumni to share titles from their summer reading list for those of us who love a good book recommendation! 

These books are not required for any particular course, but instead are a peek into our hearts and minds as we enter this new season.

As you discern what books you’d like to add to your summer list, we invite you to consult this resource and consider buying a book from a Black-owned independent bookstore.

Community Recommendations
	In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World by Padriag O’Tuama  Recommended by Millicent Haase, MDiv ’21, Admissions Counselor  From master storyteller and host of On Being’s Poetry Unbound, Pádraig Ó Tuama, comes an unforgettable memoir of peace and reconciliation, Celtic spirituality, belonging, and sexual identity. “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”
	This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, & the Stories that Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley  Recommended by McKenna Hight, MDiv ’24 This quote from the introduction sets the frame: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER: In her stunning debut, the creator of Black Liturgies weaves stories from three generations of her family alongside contemplative reflections to discover the “necessary rituals” that connect us with our belonging, dignity, and liberation.   “To be human in an aching world is to know our dignity and become people who safeguard the dignity of everything around us.”
	If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I? Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority by Dr. Angela Parker  Recommended by McKenna Hight, MDiv ’24 A challenge to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy that calls into question how Christians are taught more about the way of Whiteness than the way of Jesus.  “In essence, If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I allows me to hold the idea of Scripture as authoritative while interrogating the doctrines of inerrancy and infallibility as tools of White supremacist thought that promote the erasure of communal memory.”

More Community Recommendations:

Cheryl Goodwin, Director of Institutional Assessment and Library Services  

• A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McClaren 

Daniel Tidwell-Davis, Director of Student & Academic Services 

•  The Beautiful Something Else by Ash Van Oterloo 
• Undergoing God: Dispatches from the Scene of a Break-In by James Alison 

Jana Peterson, MDiv ’21 & current theology doctoral student at NAIITS 

• Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth by Randy Woodley 
• Unsettling the Word: Biblical Experiments in Decolonization by Steven Heinrichs 
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer 
• Dear White Peacemakers: Dismantling Racism with Grit and Grace by Osheta Moore
• Permission Granted: Take the Bible into Your Own Hands by Jennifer Grace Bird Dr. Ron Ruthruff, Associate Professor of Theology and Culture

Dr. Joel Kiekintveld, Adjunct Faculty, Listening Lab Leader 

• Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision by Randy Woodley 
• The Uncontrollability of the World by Hartmut Rosa 
• When Church Stops Working: A Future for Your Congregation Beyond More Money, Programs, and Innovation by Andrew Root and Blair D. Bertrand 
• How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor by James K. A. Smith 

Katrina Fitzpatrick, Assistant Instructor 

• Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys: A Native American Expression of the Jesus  Way by Richard Twiss 
• Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez  
• Decolonizing Evangelicalism: An 11:59pm Conversation by Randy Woodley and Bo Sanders 
• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson 

Krista Law, MACP ’12 & MATC ’13, Enrollment Manager 

• Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne by Wil Gafney 

Lauren Peiser, Director of Partnerships 

• Holy Runaways: Rediscovering Faith After Being BUrned by Religion by Matthias Roberts 

Mackenzie Martin, Academic Advisor 

• Between Earth & Sky Series by Rebecca Roanhorse 

Dr. Maria Fee, Adjunct Faculty 

• The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race by Willie James Jennings 
• Erotic Defiance: Womanism, Freedom, and Resistance by Courtney Bryant 
• All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley
• Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art by Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt
• Writing Theology Well: A Rhetoric for Theological and Biblical Writers by Lucretia B. Yaghjian
• Walking On Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L’Engle

Dr. O’Donnell Day, Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology

• On Learning from the Patient by Patrick Casement
• Internal Racism: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Race and Difference by M Fakhry Davids
• Racist States of Mind: Understanding the Perversion of Curiosity and Concern by Narendra Keval
• Thinking Space: Promoting Thinking  About Race, Culture and Diversity in Psychotherapy and Beyond by Frank Lowe
• Coming to Life in the Consulting Room: Toward a New Analytic Sensibility by Thomas Ogden 

Dr. Paul Hoard, Assistant Professor of Counseling Psychology

• Freud and Beyond by Stephen Mitchell and Margaret Black
• Philosophy and Theology by John Caputo 
• My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
• The Gift of Fire by Richard Mitchell
• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman  
• A People’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology by Daniel Jose Gaztambide 
• Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski 
• How to Read Lacan by Slavoj Zizek 
• The Body Keeps Score: Brian, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk 
• Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back by Julia Serano 

Dr. Ron Ruthruff, Associate Professor of Theology and Culture

• The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy by Philip S Gorski and Samuel Perry
• American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens The Church by Andrew Whitehead 
• The Psychology of Christian Nationalism: Why People are Drawn in and How to Talk Across the Great Divide by Pamela Cooper White 
• Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin JR  

Dr. Pat Loughery, Affiliate Faculty  

• The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday by Rob Walker  
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built: A Monk and Robot Book by Becky Chambers
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

Jeanette Scott, MACP ’08, Practicum Leader

• American Nations by Colin Woodard

We look forward to being in conversation with you about the places your own readings and curiosities take you this summer when we enter into learning together this fall. Until then, we hope each of us can find some good time in the sun.