87 Books Like Dear Mama God

I am an ordained minister with over 10 years of experience serving as a pastor in both the hospital and church settings. I’m also a mom of three children, ages 2, 5, and 7. I routinely get asked for resources to help raise children in the Christian faith. As both a pastor and a mother, I am a strong advocate for teaching children a theology they won’t have to heal from. All the books I recommend are progressive, inclusive, and diverse. I’ve done extensive research when it comes to faith-based literature, and I’m passionate about finding the best books to recommend to families.

I am a former hospital chaplain. My job was to accompany people through the earliest stages of dealing with crisis, trauma, and grief. In four years, I responded to more than 750 deaths, along with countless car accidents, gunshots, stabbings, miscarriages, stillbirths, violence, and unimaginable abuse. With a front-row seat for the worst of this world, faith became much more complicated. I wrestle every day but still cling to faith amid the spiritual and mental scars. 

I am an ordained minister with over 10 years of experience serving as a pastor in both the hospital and church settings. I’m also a mom of three children, ages 2, 5, and 7. I routinely get asked for resources to help raise children in the Christian faith. As both a pastor and a mother, I am a strong advocate for teaching children a theology they won’t have to heal from. All the books I recommend are progressive, inclusive, and diverse. I’ve done extensive research when it comes to faith-based literature, and I’m passionate about finding the best books to recommend to families.

I am an ordained minister with over 10 years of experience serving as a pastor in both the hospital and church settings. I’m also a mom of three children, ages 2, 5, and 7. I routinely get asked for resources to help raise children in the Christian faith. As both a pastor and a mother, I am a strong advocate for teaching children a theology they won’t have to heal from. All the books I recommend are progressive, inclusive, and diverse. I’ve done extensive research when it comes to faith-based literature, and I’m passionate about finding the best books to recommend to families.

I have a PhD in cultural mythology and wrote my dissertation on heroine journeys, which became my book Jane Eyre’s Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine Story. I've come to understand that the traditional hero quest story is usually about returning society to the way it used to be, before something threatened or changed it. In contrast, heroines (as long as they are not just gender-swapped heroes) tend to question how things have been and upset the status quo. First, the heroine must learn to discern what is good and right in the world and identify the old, rotten ways that must be discarded if all are to prosper.

Raised in an atheist family, I came to faith in Christ in middle age and am now devoted to spreading the Gospel. I am a PhD biochemist and the author of the award-winning The Works of His Hands: A Scientist’s Journey from Atheism to Faith. I was a professor at three major universities and held leadership positions at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. I have published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, as well as articles on science and faith. I serve as the Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly magazine God and Nature. My passion is to proclaim the harmony between science and Christianity.

I love words! As a child, I learned the power of stories from my father, a master storyteller and creator of 480 original Brer Rabbit stories. I began writing myself at the age of seven, majored in journalism, and enjoyed a career that included everything from technical writing to several of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul books. But only through poetry did I discover the beauty of getting to the essence of experience. I love how poetry takes both the writer and the reader to a deeper place, creating intimacy, giving us “ah-ha” moments, and touching heart and spirit.

I have written and published six Christian historical novels, three rescued from food addiction devotionals, two ultimate planners, and Rescued from Worry, which is my personal story. I started Purebooks Publishing and publish other people’s books. I teach writer’s workshop classes and tell authors that readers want their books to reach their hearts. To do this, your story has to reach your heart first. If you put your heart into your writing, your readers will automatically connect. What makes a great story? One that moves you and has a lasting effect on your life without the explicit. That’s the kind of books I like to read and write. 

I have spent my career writing and teaching philosophy, working on early-modern philosophers, especially that most controversial and enigmatic figure, René Descartes. In recent years my main interest has been in the philosophy of religion, focusing on grand traditional questions about the meaning of life, and on the spiritual dimension of religious thought and practice. I have argued for a ‘humane’ turn in philosophy, meaning that philosophical inquiry should not confine itself to abstract intellectual argument alone, but should draw on a full range of resources, including literary, poetic, imaginative, and emotional modes of awareness, as we struggle to come to terms with the mystery of human existence. 

I'm a teacher, philosopher, writer, Professor of Philosophy, and holder of the Sullivan Chair in Philosophy at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, Missouri, USA. I'm the author/editor of sixteen books on such topics as religion and science, religion and politics, contemporary European philosophy, and political philosophy. I'm particularly interested in how religion and science, especially evolution, can be shown to be compatible with each other, as well as in developing an argument that there is no chance operating in nature (including in biology). My book and the books below explore these fascinating topics from almost every possible angle, and should whet readers’ appetites for further thinking about these intriguing matters!