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.”
Hi Mr. Yancey,
I want to start off by saying that you have been an invaluable resource for me in my shaky Christian walk. My question is about your friend Richard (Disappointment With God), and whether he ever returned to the faith after all of these years? I struggle with my faith in the exact same way that Richard did and I am very interested to know if he ever came back to faith. Thank you so much for your time. God bless you.
Sincerely, Jimmy
Jimmy, “Richard” came back to a kind of faith, but not Christian faith. His beliefs are more in line with New Age, a belief in supernatural and another world, but not one he would express in Christian terms. He has overcome much anger over the years. I know he appreciates your interest, and I’ll let him know next time we communicate. –Philip
Hello Philip.
I´m writing to thank you for everything you wrote and I had the opportunity to read.
It will be always a pleasure to lean with your wise words and share everything I can with others. Vanishing grace imacted me in a way it is hard to explain… all histories inside the book, all thoughts on it… every word of it impacted me a lot.
Your words helped me to get close to God and I wish you receive all God can give you in this life and at heaven too.
Thanks a lot Philip, thanks a lot.
Never my friend, never stop doing what God gave you as gift, never stop fascinating people with your wise words. You have no idea how many people you helped with our words, but in heaven you gonna see them all and your prize will be there.
Thanks a lot John, thanks again, hope to meet you someday.
God bless you and your family.
Cheers
Marcello Salvate
From Brazil, MG, Belo Horizonte
I grew up in an ultra-conservative (cult) “christian church”. I wrote you a letter once before and you sent me a signed book about faith surviving the church. I loved that book but I”m not writing you now for any renumeration–I was more impressed (and touched) by your letter. I’m trying to follow the bible and have had some pretty amazing things happen since then but now I feel like I’m in the great darkness of testing the soul, and it has been a few years of this and I’m really hurting. I can’t seem to get my health and will together to get anything going so my wife, a nurse, supports our family at present. My mother-in-law has shown me scriptures such as “If he does not work, neither shall he eat” and others. I’m trying to believe in the amazing grace of God through Christ but I feel like I have no ministry other than perhaps to my wife and boys. Recently a Christian relative said he does not pray for mercy for others anymore, but that they should be given their ministry instead. I don’t know why, but it made me emotional…I had to walk outside for embarrassment because I couldn’t stop the tears. I was raised to believe I fall so short, but now I’m like my name “Nathan David”…telling my sins to myself. Can you suggest anything to help me feel I’m worthy of the sacrifice made…I am simultaneously eager and scared to meet Jesus again. If nothing else could you please pray I could be more of worth to my family and God would help with my depression and chronic pain. Thanks for your time.
Mr. Yancey,
I read What’s So Amazing About Grace and agreed with your message so much that I have both recommended it and used several references from it in my ‘amateur writer’ article The Simplicity of Grace prepared for my Serra Club Newsletter to be submitted for October.
I am now just beginning Part Three of Rumors of Another World and once again completely agree with all your suppositions. I would really enjoy meeting you but would be pleased to converse via e-mail as well.
Mike