What We’re Reading

Editor’s Note: With summer here, members of the IACS community are sharing their reading recommendations in our new feature “What We’re Reading.”

These recommended books range from theology and history to art, journalism and mystery novels. They are educational, informative and offer literary escapes that will entertain and inspire readers through summer and beyond.

Be sure to watch this space as we post future reading lists from IACS staff, scholars and friends.

A Wounded Innocence: Sketches for a Theology of Art
By Alejandro R. García-Rivera (2003, The Liturgical Press)

Theology has most often depended on words — often beautiful words to be sure. But what about images? What about the beauty and wonder of the gospel found in painting and sculpture, in drawing and stained glass? García-Rivera takes these questions seriously and writes, for example, about the doctrine of justification while contemplating the Vietnam Memorial.

The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began
By Valerie Hansen (2021, Scribner)

Usually, we think of globalization as part of the new millennium, possible only with rapid communication afforded by airplanes . . . or satellites . . . or the internet. Hansen tells the surprising story of global connections beginning with an earlier millennial turn — connections made, for example, via Viking longboats, camel caravans and southeast Asian double canoes. A fun and informative look at the longer history of curiosity, commerce, and travel across the globe.

Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity
By Robert Chao Romero (2020, InterVarsity Press)

This is a book I want my global church history students at Fuller Seminary to read. For 500 years, the church in Latin America has faced injustice and oppression from all sides. Christianity, however, has played a significant role in responding to injustice. Read this book and meet some members of the church’s “great cloud of witnesses”— from Bartolomé de las Casas in the 16th century and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in the 17th to Gustavo Gutiérrez and Oscar Romero in the 20th – and more in the 21st. And read this book to meet what Robert Chao Romero terms the “Brown Church” and to see a witness to faith that can transform the entirety of life and the world.

Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America
By Chris Arnade (2019, Sentinel)

A gorgeous, gut-wrenching book. Photojournalist Chris Arnade introduces readers to people in what he calls “back row America.” Across the country from the Bronx to Bakersfield, in settings as disparate as fast food restaurants and churches, Arnade’s images and conversations reveal both the hope and desolation of people who are often invisible. There are no pat answers here, just hard questions and images that serve as a call for dignity for all.

Castle Shade
By Laurie R. King (2021, Bantam Books)

Just for fun: Castle Shade is the most recent book in King’s set of mystery novels featuring Sherlock Holmes and his much younger, Oxonian, American wife, Mary Russell. The series began in 1994 with A Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Suffice it to say that I bought the newest in hardback as soon as I saw it at our local bookstore because I couldn’t wait to read about Mary Russell’s next adventure.