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.”
Just a word of thanks & encouragement. Your book “Soul Survivor” gave me fresh & richer insights into 8 or so of the people who had also touched my life (I’m now 68) as well as introductions to others of mere acquaintance. I just sent the book to a former high school student of mine now in college (I send her one a year) because, as I wrote her, it can help her see and experience how richly diverse Christians & Christianity are, helping us avoid (as the Japanese proverb puts it) being a frog in a well that does not know the ocean (and in some cases helping us survive wounds from those wells). Living in Africa & Japan as well as the US and working with & reading about many different kinds of Christians as a pastor, missionary & bookaholic has helped me so much, and your book will help my younger friend broaden her horizons a bit more quickly. How fortunate we are to be able to grow through fellow pilgrims across the globe and the centuries, so like and unlike us. And how fortunate I am to read your writing & share it to help with that. Their 13 lives & testimonies still live to edify so many more through the gift of your book. Thanks from the heart.
May he who set the galaxies ablaze keep your heart burning for him. – Ted B
I like that content, Thanks for sharing about Philip Yancey.
Dear Philip,
Your books with Dr. Paul Brand have changed my life. Several years ago, I read “In the Likeness of God” with my dear friend, Bob Snyder M.D. Similar to your relationship with Dr. Paul Brand, I am significantly younger than Bob. Almost fifty years, in fact. Through a series of incredible circumstances, Bob asked if I would write a book with him. I was nineteen years old at the time. You can imagine how difficult it was for a nineteen-year-old and a seventy-year-old to write together in a unified voice. We searched and searched and prayed and prayed for a solution, until we found “In the Likness of God.” Your relationship with Dr. Paul Brand and your amazing work together inspired us and acted as our model for “Come, Walk with Me.” We published “Come, Walk with Me” in 2020. If you are interested in reading it, you can download a free electronic copy here: https://thefaithjourneyprocess.org/
Thank you so much for your hard work and dedicated service to God. I am honored to call you my brother in Christ.
Dr. Brand and I were 61 and 25, respectively, when we met. I’m so glad you followed in our footsteps! You may know that I went back and updated/revised the two books in one volume: Fearfully and Wonderfully.
Thank you so much for your book “Where the Light Fell”. It has churned up much in my soul because I have a similar past experience with the church. I would like to know which of your books I should read next. I want to know God better. Thanks!