Check out my book review of Engaging the Old Testament: How to Read Biblical Narrative, Poetry, and Prophecy Well by Dominick S. Hernández. This review can be found in the January 2025 issue of the Religious Studies Review: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rsr.17566
1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
2. Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology by Shane Hawk
3. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life by Catherine Mowry Lacugna
4. After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology by Hanna Reichel
5. The Development of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Yoruba (African) Indigenous Christian Movement by Caleb Oluremi Oladipo
6. On First Principles by Origen
7. The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology by Amos Yong
8. So We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis by Sarah Augustine
9. Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
10. Theology in the Capitalocene: Ecology, Identity, Class, and Solidarity by Joerg Rieger
11. The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men by Vine Deloria Jr.
1. When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, edited by Joy Harjo, with LeAnne Howe and Jennifer Elise Foerster
2. Poet, the Warrior, the Prophet, by Rubem Alves
3. Decolonial Christianities: Latinx and Latin American Perspectives, edited by Raimundo Barreto and Roberto Sirvent
4. Reading and Writing the Lakota Language, by Albert White Hat Sr.
5. Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization, by Elaine Enns and Ched Myers
6. Galatians: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, by Nancy Elizabeth Bedford
7. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, by Linda Tuhiwai Smith
8. Complaint!, by Sara Ahmed
9. Faith and Freedom in Galatia and Senegal: The Apostle Paul, Colonists and Sending Gods, by Aliou Cissé Niang
10. Trading Futures: A Theological Critique of Financialized Capitalism, by Filipe Maia
You who cast aside the poor
for your own political and financial gain
may have created comfortable homes and lives
but your comfort shall be short lived.
___
Christ says that he is present amidst ‘the least of these.’
By putting your feet on the necks of the poor,
you have transgressed against God
and will be judged accordingly in eternity.
___
But there is still hope for you. Repent!
GIve up all that you have
and become a listener and an advocate
of the justice that the poor demand.
___
For in these actions, you stand with the poor, with God, in love.
Anything less is to reject God and to embrace evil.
Lord,
prepare my ears to hear the suffering
shield my heart to not take on that pain
warm my soul toward genuine empathy
enliven my mind to interpret and translate
and sharpen my tongue to speak the wisdom
of Your Holy Spirit
Amen.
www.goodreads.com/book/show/32311036
“NDN teens have the highest rate of suicide of any population group in America. A white man can massacre 9 black ppl in a church and be fed Burger King by the cops afterward. A presidential candidate gains a platform by saying Mexican immigrants are murdered and rapists
It’s hard for me to imagine curiosity [in America] as anything more than a pretext for colonialism” (Tommy Pico, ‘Nature Poem,’ 40).
“Look, I’m sure you really do just want to wear those dream catcher earrings. They’re beautiful. I’m sure you don’t mean any harm, I’m sure you don’t really think abt us at all. I’m sure you don’t understand the concept of off-limits. But what if by not wearing a headdress in yr music video or changing yr damn mascot and perhaps adding .05% of personal annoyance to yr life for the twenty minutes it lasts, the 103 young ppl who tried to kill themselves on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation over the past four months wanted to live 50% more” (Tommy Pico, ‘Nature Poem,’ 56).
www.goodreads.com/book/show/30968235
“I recoil
at we. Now we
know; We feel love
when; We believed
the Earth was flat
until; We stir with
heavy feeling bc…
I wipe my muddy feet
on the loveseat of We
unless I’m talking
about you and me.
Kumeyaays knew
a rounded Earth based
on the curve of stars
or didn’t, I’ll never know.
It’s a dark part inside me.
Books are fallible, towers
of letters with the power
you give them. It’s heartbreaking
to watch your pillars fall
Watch the crops dry up
and die House set on fire Forced
to dig up yr dead To. Literally.
Dig. Up. The. Old. Graveyard.
n move w/them onto a stone hill
where nothing that grows
can live. Penned in like cattle.
Approaching scientism,
universalism, a supremacy
of any given thought
process—strikes me A
hammer of dark spots. America
never intended for me to live
So that we never intended
to include me”
(Tommy Pico, ‘IRL,’ 70).
www.goodreads.com/book/show/45734929
First and foremost, I need to clear the air: this is NOT a gendered book. The only place where the editors hint at a particular presentation is when the editor’s note only mentions biblical figures Hannah and Esther. And to that, I say “come on editors, do better. Resist the idolatry of capitalism and gendered marketing, please. It harms all of us who cannot fit your false expectations of hyper masculinity and feminism.” We need to resist the consumer world that says a Bible designed to highlight the beauty of scripture does NOT mean that it should be primarily marketed to girls. Boys MUST learn to see the beauty of scripture, too. If you get this version for a girl, get it for a boy, too. The Bible is for all people, so let’s stop boxing ourselves in with gendered stereotypes. Thank you and I will now step off my soap box.
This Zondervan NIV 2011 updated translation, written in Zondervan NIV typeface, is a WONDERFUL version of the Bible that is highly engaging. First of all, it does what many versions cannot: it meets the needs of visual learners. The editors of this version worked with BibleGateway to find the most searched scriptures and balanced them with scriptures that are lesser known to present 600 scriptures in colorful artistic presentations through the entirety of the Bible! 9 different artists took charge of illuminating the 600 different scriptures. They also did a fantastic job of making the chosen scriptures memorizable so that folks can engage with their Scripture reading for memorization as well.
Each page of the Bible has a couple of inches on the edge with lines for note-taking. Every few pages has this space taken up with the artistic presentation of scripture. These illustrations are gorgeous and reflect the essence of each individual scripture.
The Bible also comes with sticker tabs for each book of the Bible, if you want to have the books of the Bible marked in this way. All this to say, this version of the Bible is meant to be engaged: written on, highlighted, and covered in stickers. Have at it! Mark it up and make it your own!
The Bible also comes with a sturdy box carrying case which is helpful for being mobile. It is also small enough to carry around with you! The cover itself is a gorgeous felt floral pattern with a woody brown felt binding. Visually appealing without being obnoxious.
The back of the Bible has a table for understanding biblical weights and measures in comparison with our modern weights and measures, an index of the 9 scripture artists and which scriptures illustrations they created, and 5 pages of lines for note-taking.
It has been a joy engaging with this visually stimulating and artistic version of the NIV translation Bible and I look forward to utilizing it and learning from it in the months/years to come!
Life is a poem. A
journey toward understanding
amidst senseless words.
to claim one’s self in
Christ: to imagine God’s King-
-dom into being.
Deacon Grant 