About Philip
Growing up in a strict, fundamentalist church in the southern USA, a young Philip Yancey tended to view God as “a scowling Supercop, searching for anyone who might be having a good time—in order to squash them.” Yancey jokes today about being in recovery from a toxic church. “Of course, there were good qualities too. If a neighbor’s house burned down, the congregation would rally around and show charity—if, that is, the house belonged to a white person. I grew up confused by the contradictions. We heard about love and grace, but I didn’t experience much. And we were taught that God answers prayers, miraculously, but my father died of polio just after my first birthday, despite many prayers for his healing.”
For Yancey, reading offered a window to a different world. So, he devoured books that opened his mind, challenged his upbringing, and went against what he had been taught. A sense of betrayal engulfed him. “I felt I had been lied to. For instance, what I learned from a book like To Kill a Mockingbird or Black Like Me contradicted the racism I encountered in church. I went through a period of reacting against everything I was taught, and even discarding my faith. I began my journey back mainly by encountering a world very different than I had been taught, an expansive world of beauty and goodness. Along the way I realized that God had been misrepresented to me. Cautiously, warily, I returned, circling around the faith to see if it might be true.”
Ever since, Yancey has explored the most basic questions and deepest mysteries of the Christian faith, guiding millions of readers with him. Early on he crafted best-selling books such as Disappointment with God and Where is God When it Hurts? while also editing The Student Bible. He coauthored three books with the renowned surgeon Dr. Paul Brand. “No one has influenced me more,” he says. “We had quite a trade: I gave words to his faith, and in the process he gave faith to my words.” In time, he has explored central matters of the Christian faith, penning award-winning titles such as The Jesus I Never Knew, What’s So Amazing About Grace? and Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? His books have garnered 13 Gold Medallion Awards from Christian publishers and booksellers. He currently has more than 17 million books in print, published in over 50 languages worldwide. In his memoir, Where the Light Fell, Yancey recalls his lifelong journey from strict fundamentalism to a life dedicated to a search for grace and meaning, thus providing a type of prequel to all his other books.
Yancey worked as a journalist in Chicago for some twenty years, editing the youth magazine Campus Life while also writing for a wide variety of magazines. In the process he interviewed diverse people enriched by their personal faith, such as President Jimmy Carter, Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller, and Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement. In 1992 he and his wife Janet, a social worker and hospice chaplain, moved to the foothills of Colorado, and his writing took a more personal, introspective turn.
“I write books for myself,” he says. “I’m a pilgrim, recovering from a bad church upbringing, searching for a faith that makes its followers larger and not smaller. Writing became for me a way of deconstructing and reconstructing faith. I feel overwhelming gratitude that I can make a living exploring the issues that most interest me.
“I tend to go back to the Bible as a model, because I don’t know a more honest book. I can’t think of any argument against God that isn’t already included in the Bible. To those who struggle with my books, I reply, ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t be reading them.’ Yet some people do need the kinds of books I write. They’ve been burned by the church, or they’re upset about certain aspects of Christianity. I understand that feeling of disappointment, even betrayal. I feel called to speak to those living in the borderlands of faith.”
For a long time, you have been one of my favorite authors, helping me to keep pursuing the faith when church hurt made me want to disappear. Over time, I have seen how the Lord has used my own “dark night of the soul” to cut away at the fluff, shaping my joy to be found in Him alone. As I read your recent memoir (thank you for your honesty in writing), I grieved over your journey, but I also appreciated SO MUCH when you wrote that none of it was wasted. Your sorrow has been used to comfort so many of us. Your books, your insight, your wisdom…after reading, it is easy to see that so much of that was shaped in the valley. It could not have been easy, but thank you for not throwing it away. Death swallowed up in victory is something only Jesus can do, and you point us to Him through it all. Such a gift. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.
Philip,
Just sharing my gratitude for all your writing. It has been such a blessing in my life. I still have the NIV Student Bible my Mother gave me a few months after my Dad passed away from cancer when I was still in college. It is the Bible I recommend most to Parents and Students alike (I’m a NextGen Pastor). You always ask the biggest questions and tackle them in challenging, thoughtful ways. You are a treasure and gift to the Church, whose impact and legacy stretches to all 7 Continents…not just the one your Mother wished you went to serve. Thank you for following God’s path. Blessings. As it is almost Christmas at the time of my posting this, I hope you and your Family have a wonderful Season.
Hi Philip,
I just wanted to say that your book, Reaching for the Invisible God, has brought me much-needed hope during an unprecedented and unexpected period of doubt in my life. I have always been academically inclined, and more likely to resonate with intellectual discussions about faith than stories of emotional experiences. Recently a friend of mine deconstructed his faith, and then decided to leave entirely. This amplified the discomfort I have been feeling for many years about the emphasis of evangelicalism on a personal relationship and emotional experiences with God that I simply could not relate to, as much as I wanted to. I am not an overly emotional person, but the journey of research and reading this has taken me on in order to better understand the Christian faith, why people deconstruct and what I truly believe, has been heart-rending. The ground feels like it has been shifting as I am re-examining much of what I was taught growing up in the church, and I have felt quite alone in knowing who to turn to to talk about my long felt but newly realised doubts. My husband is a pastor and has been wonderfully supportive, but as a pastor’s wife it is difficult to find a safe space to express these questions and doubts. I have been feeling quite overwhelmed, alone, discouraged and truly terrified that this journey will lead me to a place of unbelief, and what would I be left with then? A few days ago I was searching the book shelf for more books to help me sort through this time in the fog, and I found yours. The first few pages were a balm to my soul, somehow expressing perfectly what I have been feeling and the questions I have been wrestling with. I am not finished the book, or this process, but the knowledge that there are others who also wonder the same things is truly what I needed. It is also an answer to, not my, but my husband’s prayer that same day I found your book, that God would give me what I needed. I have hope that this process for me will result in a strengthened and more vibrant faith. Thank you.
This is so well-expressed. You bring joy to my soul. I’ve just published a memoir, Where the Light Fell, which details my own struggle with these same questions. Keep reaching!
Hi Philip,
I am currently reading your book ‘Whats so amazing about Grace’ and want to thank you for it. It has been a great help to me to bringing to realisation my thoughts around what my attitude to many of the issues confronting Christians today should be; the answer is to be graceful of course. Have you revised the book ever? I see it was written in 1997, if it was relevant then it surely is relevant today. It should be compulsory reading for Christians to learn how not to be full of ‘ungrace’, how it saddens me when I hear harsh words spoken of others by those in debt to the Grace of God. One of my favourite portions of scripture is Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well; how tender he was with her. It oftens brings me to tears when I read it because I see my own history in that woman, thats what is so amazing about Jesus, his Grace.
W.S.A.A.G. is the first book I have read of yours and it surely won’t be the last, thanks again.