Apply to Host a Book Group in Winter 2022

What do I need to do to participate?

1. Invite at least 3 other people to participate in a book discussion group.
2. Choose which one of the two books you would like to read.
3. Submit group members’ names and information by December 20, 2021 at 12:00 noon, EST.
4. Hold 4 discussion group meetings during January and February.
5. Complete a feedback form at the end of February.

What will I receive?

1. All participants will receive a free copy of one of two featured texts. Note that participants from outside the USA will receive e-books.
2. Participants will also have access to pre-recorded interviews with the author.

What are the featured books?

Prayer in the Night by Tish Harrison Warren

Our first selection features a recent book by the New York Times newsletter writer and Christianity Today columnist, Tish Harrison Warren.

Framed around a nighttime prayer of Compline, Harrison Warren explores themes of human vulnerability, suffering, and God's seeming absence. When she navigated a time of doubt and loss, the prayer was grounding for her. She writes that practices of prayer "gave words to my anxiety and grief and allowed me to reencounter the doctrines of the church not as tidy little antidotes for pain, but as a light in darkness, as good news."

Where do we find comfort when we lie awake worrying or weeping in the night? This book offers a prayerful and frank approach to the difficulties in our ordinary lives at work, at home, and in a world filled with uncertainty.

Tish Harrison Warren is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary, which was Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year. She is a weekly contributing newsletter writer for the New York Times and writes a monthly column for Christianity Today. She has worked in ministry settings for over a decade as a campus minister with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries and as the writer-in-residence at Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Comment Magazine, The Point, and elsewhere.

The Beatitudes through the Ages by Rebekah Eklund

Our second (more lengthy) selection features an exegetical study by Rebekah Eklund on the Beatitudes, the theme of the worship services at the 2022 Calvin Symposium on Worship. 

The Beatitudes are among the most influential teachings in human history. For two millennia, they have appeared in poetry and politics, and in the thought of mystics and activists, as Christians and others have reflected on their meaning and shaped their lives according to the Beatitudes’ wisdom. 

But what does it mean to be hungry, or meek, or pure in heart? Is poverty a material condition or a spiritual one? And what does being blessed entail? 

In this book, Rebekah Eklund explores how the Beatitudes have affected readers across differing eras and contexts. From Matthew and Luke in the first century, to Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham in the twentieth, Eklund considers how men and women have understood and applied the Beatitudes to their own lives through the ages. Reading in the company of past readers helps us see how rich and multifaceted the Beatitudes truly are, illuminating what they might mean for us today.

Dr. Rebekah Eklund is associate professor of theology at Loyola University Maryland, where she teaches Scripture, theology, and ethics. She is the author of Jesus Wept: The Significance of Jesus' Laments in the New Testament and coauthor, with Samuel Wells and Ben Quash, of the second edition of Introducing Christian Ethics.