Interested in what this pastor is reading this year? With an impending sabbatical, you won’t find too many exciting books listed. I usually rotate between fiction, science, and theology. Here’s my 2025 reading list so far, with the most recent from the top.
Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story about Who Changed the Bible and Why. New York: Harper Collins, 2005.
A sound introduction to textual criticism and the history of Bible transmission. Although Erhman has a reputation for being sensational in his theological views, the book is rather tame in its treatment of the sanctity of scripture, regardless of the click bait title.
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars. New York: Penguin Press, 2023.
A frank and humorous look at the politics, economics, and overall challenges of space colonization. The research, which is quite in-depth, looks at everything from the practical challenges of going to space, such as procreation, to settling in long-term communities whether it be space stations or planets.
Michael Crichton, The Great Train Robbery. New York: Penguin, 1978.
A fun romp through mid-19th Victorian England, in the height of urbanism, industry, and bank robberies. Crichton takes a detailed look at the heist of the century!
Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002.
A philosophical look on the “art” and aesthetics of travel, in which the author dialogues with writers of the past while traveling throughout the world in the present. His topics are captivating: A chapter on “curiosity”, for instance, proposes a blueprint for utilizing bewilderment and investigation in seeing new things while traveling, even if it is a “journey around one’s bedroom.” He writes, “Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions” (p. 116).
Jill Krementz, The Writer’s Desk, 1996
A fun “coffee table book” that explores a variety of best-selling and popular authors and their creative spaces. A fascinating journey for anyone who is an aspiring writer.
Keith DeCandido, Alien: Isolation
A more contemporary addition to the Alien franchise that follows Amanda Ripley in her failed search for her mother, Ellen and the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of the Nistromo.
Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body, 1995
Dale Martin looks at the ancient worldview of everything related to a the physical body and the experience of the Corinthian churches in the Bible. Martin explores aspects such as medicine, purity, sex and gender, and biology. A must-read for serious biblical and first-century ministers and scholars.
Henry Morris, Scientific Creationism, 1974 (second ed. 1985)
A primer for Christian “creationist” theory, complete with arguments for literal six-day creation. Morris interacts with science and cosmology from this (more) fundamentalist point of view.
Stephen King, The Dark Tower: Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, and The Wastelands (various years)
King’s first three novels in the Gunslinger series follows Rolland Deschain of Gilead and his new friends, Henry, Susan, and Jake as they journey ever closer to the mysterious Dark Tower, a nexus where all of space, time, and creation interact. This is my second foray into the Dark Tower serious, as I only made it to book four before the others were published in recent years.
Angela Denker, Disciples of White Jesus, 2025
Lutheran minister and journalist Angela Denker takes a storied and research-based look at the radicalization of young, white men in America, with an emphasis on how the far-right and Christian nationalism targets, manipulates, and recruits young men not necessarily with smitten with a white supremacist, isolated identity but who lack, in her words, “a positive rooted” identity that is biblical, Christ-centered, and community-based.
David Brin and Gregory Benford, Heart of the Comet, 1986
A “hard science fiction” classic in which a colony of spacefarers are hitching a ride on Haley’s Comet to study the comet, cultivate resources, and move humanity into its next evolutionary stage. Though it is slow, it is ahead of its time in terms of technology and imagination. It also invokes the question, Can we really use comets to travel into deep space?
Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation 2024.
Haidt brings to the forefront the phone and social media epidemic that is hitting our society. Focusing primarily on children and youth, he argues that we have moved from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood that has adversely affected our families and our children. He posits that two conflicting trajectories have created the perfect storm. On the one hand, parents are overly protective when it comes to the real world and their children’s interaction with their environment. Parents don’t let their children out of their sight and don’t let them explore their world, creating in children a lack of resiliency and the inability to traverse different situations that require problem solving and critical thinking. But on the other hand, parents have under protected their children in the digital world of social media. So children are no longer out playing by themselves, exploring their worlds and using their imagination. Instead, they’re spending hours on a screen with very little face-to-face time with other children, adults, peers, and those who might give them a more well-rounded perspective of the world and sense of confidence. The result has been disastrous, with the rise of depression, suicidal thoughts, and the inability to face conflict or stress among our young people. Haidt presents a large amount of data but does not leave us hanging. He gives recommendations for every aspect of our society, from young people, to parents, government agencies and schools. He provides solutions that are workable and easy to put in a practice. My encouragement is that every parent, pastor, teacher, and church would read this book and apply it.
Baptist Spirituality 