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.”
Dear Mr. Yancy:
I first wrote this letter in May of 2001. I decided not to send it. However, seeing you again speaking of your toxic church in Bible Study, I decided to resend it. Here it is:
Over the past several months, I have read four books dealing with similar topics: yours (Soul Survivor), Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible, Mouw (The Smell of Sawdust), and Carpenter, History of Fundamentalism in the 30’s and 40’s.
The Poisonwood Bible has been highly touted, but I found it to be a very cynical and distorted book. I know thousands of Southern Baptists and none fits the Elmer Gantry or Mitchner’s preacher in Hawaii in the slightest. I might not agree with the perspective or conduct of a lot of Southern Baptists, but this was the most unfair caricature I have seen in a long time.
Mouw’s book was the most delightful. I sense in Richard (both in personal contact as well as in reading), a gentle, loving spirit that was most encouraging. He spoke to a number of us seminary presidents last January. Even he does not have it all right. I shared with him one area that a lot of evangelicals don’t hold, that he said they did.
Carpenter’s book is a good correction on some of the distortion about fundamentalism, and Mouw acknowledges that correction. It is a good read to see the tremendous good that was generated during that time.
Your book, I thoroughly enjoyed, but was nonetheless disturbed by it. You introduced me to a couple of people I had not known before. However, I was troubled by what still (after all these years) comes across as bitterness and cynicism. I am the president of a Bible college and a seminary. We do not characterize ourselves as fundamentalist (preferring evangelical), but others might do so. I certainly don’t think our Bible College is at all like what you presented in your book.
The tone you use to characterize the Bible college you attended is almost snide. I was particularly disturbed when you quoted your brother who used to quote 1 Chronicles (parbar) and people thought he was speaking in tongues. I detected what might be arrogance or at least superciliousness. A dear friend of mine who grew up with you in your church in Atlanta becomes furious just seeing your book. She feels you slandered both the church and the pastor.
I am the product of the Bible college movement, hold a Ph.D. in Semitics from Catholic University of America, and currently enjoy working with a group of Bible college young people who excite me daily with their enthusiasm to know God and make him known.
I seldom write to people about these kind of issues, but I was drawn toward you in your writings and yet disturbed that one in your position to influence so many has an attitude toward the conservative wing of the church that I believe is distorted. My guess is that you are somewhat melancholic as well as very bright. This tends to produce cynical people .
For whatever it is worth, I have passed this perspective on and tell you quite honestly that I have and do pray for you.
Sincerely in Christ,
Homer Heater, Jr.
President emeritus, Washington Bible College/Capital Bible Seminary
I haven’t actually read the book you mention. I have read “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” several times on the other hand. Certainly Jesus did come bearing grace and truth but above all he came with love. What is the greatest commandment? And the one like it? (It’s also mentioned again in 1 John 4:21)
Frank, I don’t know you apart from your comment on here. But to compare your comments about those who you feel “lack” truth with Jesus’ interactions with sinners, I know without any doubt who I would rather have feedback on my life from. Jesus came across sinners who accepted that they were hopelessly in the wrong situation. Jesus did not condemn these sinners.
Certainly there is nothing wrong with pointing out in love, errors to people you know well enough to do so. Nor steering people away from teachings that are suspect. But to come onto someone’s website (who I suspect you don’t know, obviously) and to misrepresent them and attempt to dictate their livelihood wouldn’t come into my definition of loving your neighbour as yourself.
I just want to say thanks. Your books have been used by God to keep me in the fold. Please, keep writing friend.
I have read a few of your books,now reading vanishing grace…..in a word…wonderful.
If only I could live up to your most generous words. You are the one on the front lines of grace. If something I write somehow helps you in what you do, I am very grateful. –Philip