Pádraig Ó Tuama

A Is for Alabaster

Bible Studies & Devotionals

“In A Is for Alabaster , Anna Carter Florence does what artists have always done: shows us how the art of language, story, character, plot, poetry, and shock can hold a mirror to the face of the reader and invite responses as strange and wondrous as the art. She doesn’t present these texts as safe—they’re not—rather she praises their power.”

Conversion Therapy Dropout

History & Biography

“This book needs to be read. It needs to be read by people who are looking for a freedom denied them by their faith communities. It also needs to be read by people who lead those faith communities, making reckless promises and capitalizing on wasting the energies, time--and sometimes lives--of those whose dignity deserves to be recognized, not rubbished.”

Holy Runaways

Christian Living

“Holy Runaways is a testament to struggle, questioning, intelligence, intellectual exploration, and, finally, to the belief that faith without flourishing is a contradiction in terms. It holds a mirror up, asks what its reader sees, and offers pathways of safety, life, and freedom.”

How Not to Be Afraid

Christian Living

“It is easy to say 'Do not be afraid,' but it is difficult to live it. In this book, Gareth Higgins brings us on a journey from fear to courage, from being afraid to not staying afraid, from defensiveness to an imagination about what justice might look like in private and public. Gareth Higgins is a friend. This book is too.”

Portraits of Peace

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“John Noltner knows three things about stories: people have them; people need to be heard; people need to listen. In this latest collection of stories, he comforts and challenges, he shows the fractured stories and the flourishing ones, he shares stories that contract and stories that expand. In this, he is a curator of the thing that might save us: our capacity to tell; our capacity to listen; our capacity to change.”

Post-Colonial Theology

Theology

“Robert Heaney’s Post-Colonial Theology takes the reality of dominance, hate, and the irreversible nature of centuries of subjugation as its beginning ground. Given that so much of the world’s surface has been impacted by the project of imperialism, it is inevitable that most people are either the offspring of landed peoples, the offspring of dispossessed peoples or—like Heaney—the offspring of a hybrid blend of both landed and dispossessed. Elegantly, using poetry, privilege, and precision, he asks serious questions of power; everything comes under his scrutiny: history, doctrine, ecclesial governance, policy, whiteness, liturgy, and apologies. Not satisfied with a distant essay, this book is a demonstration of what engaged academia looks like—Heaney scrutinizes his own story in light of a story of empire, religion, dispossession, and dominance. Throughout Post-Colonial Theology, Heaney amplifies voices that have re-grounded him. This important book honors the seminal work of Korean, South African, Nigerian, Kenyan, and Native American theologians. Weaving poetry throughout the text, the reader is brought on an educational journey that re-envisions the question of God into an exploration for a practice of humanity with integrity. It is a work of profound impact, both for the academic and the analyst. The text introduces us to the author in a brilliant demonstration of the value of post-colonial studies to be rooted in the specific. We are brought into Heaney’s wrestling with the personal and academic question of how theology can contribute meaningfully to a world seeking to tell the truth about the impact of the colonial enterprise. This is a book for generations to study, to learn, and live by.”

Rewilding Prayer

Prayer & Spiritual Formation

“In Rewilding Prayer, Sally Douglas turns the eyes of prayer to the world. Here are prayers for insomnia, tea breaks, confession, change and receiving terrible news. Sally’s vast intellect—linguistic, theological, secular, prayerful—is attuned to human experience, and concerned with shaping language that is sensitive, straightforward, devout, and daring.”

Shining like the Sun

Prayer & Spiritual Formation

“Wiens circles round questions that have intrigued people for millennia: Where am I? When am I? What is God? How do I love? He provides comfort and confrontation. He takes his faith as seriously as his doubt, and offers practices that exercise both body and belief.”

The Book of Nature

“Attention is among the deepest forms of integrity. In The Book of Nature, Barbara Mahany pays attention. She doesn't look through nature; she looks at nature and, there, sees the mysteries that make and unmake us. In an age of environmental threat and neglect, Barbara Mahany's book is a theological, poetic, and devoted plea for attention to our most fundamental constitution: matter--and everything that comes from it, including us.”

The Possibility of America

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“This is a book built on the understanding that there is a civic imagination that imagines us into a better way of being human together. Taking Twitter, literature, poetry, music lyrics, film, television, cartoons and conversations as sacred texts, David Dark looks at the things that are held up by language: power, fear, and hatred. Dark’s work holds the hope that love is a muscle we can exercise in public—and he holds us to account for how we practice.”

Wild Belief

Arts & Literature

“What is wild? The etymology suggests something uncultivated, undomesticated, but etymology may not be so helpful here. Wild is where life flourishes in its own systems: with death and decay; with growth and growling; with fear and flourishing; with humus and hunting. In the wild, life and death are their own economies. In Wild Belief, NickRipatrazone considers the wildness of belief and--perhaps more importantly--belief in wild. This book reads like ecosystematic storytheology. Taking poets as his guides, Ripatrazone searches undergrowth and horizons; he considers language that is not bound by what should be said, but rather explodes into its own system of meaning. He hikes, Nick does, and in his writing, we see things we can neither explain nor contain. Look, Nick says, over there, life where you might not have expected it. We're in unsafe territory. We are in safe hands. Look.”