{"id":142,"date":"2011-01-31T11:22:10","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T11:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/the-best-christian-books-of-2010.html"},"modified":"2011-01-31T11:22:10","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T11:22:10","slug":"the-best-christian-books-of-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/the-best-christian-books-of-2010.html","title":{"rendered":"The Best Christian Books of 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/shapeimage_5.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"shapeimage_5.png\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/83\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/08\/shapeimage_5-thumb-232x281-17064.png\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0pt 20px 20px 0pt\" height=\"281\" width=\"232\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><i>Christianity Today<\/i> has come out with its annual book awards for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/ct\/2011\/february\/bookawards2011.html\">the best Christian books of last year<\/a>. There are serious theological books by the likes of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianbook.com\/Christian\/Books\/product\/?item_no=WW838430&amp;p=1006327\">Alister McGrath<\/a>, new religious fiction by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Love-Evil-Songs-Seraphim-Book\/dp\/1400043549\">Anne Rice<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/After-You-Believe-Christian-Character\/dp\/0061730556\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1296480681&amp;sr=1-1\">a book I hadn&#8217;t yet heard of by N.T. Wrigh<\/a>t &#8212; I&#8217;ve never read a bad book by him, so I will have to check it out. Kenda Creasy Dean won in the category of pastoral leadership for her book <i>Almost Christian<\/i>, which <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/2010\/08\/mormonism-protestantism-and-the-american-teenager-a-review-of-kenda-creasy-deans-almost-christian.html\">I reviewed favorably on this blog<\/a> last summer. A few of the books on this list are ones I had not even heard of. So many books, so little time . . . .<\/p>\n<p>But where is <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Grace-Religion-Divides-Unites\/dp\/1416566716\">American Grace<\/a><\/i>? I suppose it&#8217;s not an explicitly or exclusively Christian book, but it&#8217;s a gamechanger and should be on this list.<\/p>\n<p>And of course I have to give a shout out to the book on this list that I edited: Elise Erikson Barrett&#8217;s <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thethoughtfulchristian.com\/Products\/0664235204\/what-was-lost.aspx\">What Was Lost: A Christian Journey through Miscarriage<\/a><\/i>. Way to go, Elise! This book fills a great need (why are there so few books about miscarriage when it is such a common loss?) and is beautifully written. It seems I&#8217;m not the only one who thinks so, which is very gratifying for an editor. <\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christianity Today has come out with its annual book awards for the best Christian books of last year. There are serious theological books by the likes of Alister McGrath, new religious fiction by Anne Rice, and a book I hadn&#8217;t yet heard of by N.T. Wright &#8212; I&#8217;ve never read a bad book by him,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-christianity"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Best Christian Books of 2010 - Flunking Sainthood<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/the-best-christian-books-of-2010.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Best Christian Books of 2010 - Flunking Sainthood\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Christianity Today has come out with its annual book awards for the best Christian books of last year. There are serious theological books by the likes of Alister McGrath, new religious fiction by Anne Rice, and a book I hadn&#8217;t yet heard of by N.T. Wright &#8212; I&#8217;ve never read a bad book by him,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/the-best-christian-books-of-2010.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Flunking Sainthood\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-31T11:22:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/08\/shapeimage_5-thumb-232x281-17064.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jana Riess\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Best Christian Books of 2010 - Flunking Sainthood","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/01\/the-best-christian-books-of-2010.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Best Christian Books of 2010 - Flunking Sainthood","og_description":"Christianity Today has come out with its annual book awards for the best Christian books of last year. 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She is also currently working on The Twible, a three-year Twitter project with humorous daily Bible updates for your amusement (find her on Twitter as @janariess). She has a few silly degrees from swanky schools but was never once able to climb the rope in gym class. Her spiritual director is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/author\/jriess"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}