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.”
To contact Philip,
make booking inquiries,
or request blog subscription,
email Joannie: pyasst@aol.com
Hello dear Mr. Yancey
There are two main things I want your help in..
Your beautiful books had been recommended too many times by my friends to read..
I already have these:
+ “Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants”
+ “Reaching For The Invisible God”
+ “The Jesus I Never Knew”
+ “Where Is God When It Hurts?”
+ “The Question That Never Goes Away”
+ “What’s So Amazing About Grace?”
+ “Disappointment With God”
And I need your precious advice to tell me which book should I read first —I know they are all good books but I want to make the best benifet of them by some arrangement.
The second to go, that I have ‘at least’ three of my friends that stopped attending any churchs! —their reasons are either personal (because they were going to see some friends not for listening the word of God) or unclear (they just don’t go because they think the church is boring or not full-of-soul and one of them was telling me “Yancey said it’s fine with Christianity not to go to church” another said “I’m not afraid when I meet God tell him it wasn’t ok with those churchs”! )
SO.. I had read before an article for you about how important it is to attend the church ‘Even If It Is Toxic’. Then, I want you, first of all, to pray for them and for me. And to give me some points (better with verses) that helps me and them to understand the importance of churchs in our Christian Life.
Thank you so much in advance for your patience and sorry for making it so long but I feel it’s so important for me.
God bless you 🙏
For first books, I would recommend The Jesus I Never Knew and What’s So Amazing About Grace. I don’t know where your friend got that quote about church. In interviews I’ve said if a church is abusive or toxic, you should find another one. In the short book Church: Why Bother? I try to be honest about church challenges, but definitely come down on the side of the church. If you can make room for one more book on your shelf, that one may answer your question about church. I appreciate your spirit and your concern for your friends. –Philip
Dear Philip,
I read your Q&A regarding homosexuality and the churches. I heard you when you said that you felt comfortable when both sides sent you hate letters. I would say that you were afraid to lose the respect of either side of the conflict. Thus you maintained a relationship with Mel White. . . .
But then I heard the story above from a man who has suffered needlessly due to prejudice: “Let the people around you know that you are serious about institutional corruption and the protection of whistleblowers.” This is his call to be vindicated! He wants you to stand up and be counted!
I am angry at the indifference and cowardice that kept me silent for over twenty-five years while I was being honored as one of the best and brightest theologians at The Athenaeum of Ohio. I knew, from personal experiences, that the teaching of my church regarding homosexuality was a distorted and cruel doctrine. But I also knew that no one who openly challenged Cardinal Ratzinger’s doctrine of homosexuality could survive as a pastor or theologian.
So my final and dangerous calling has been to publish a book that allows Christians of all denominations to gain a close and personal look at the dreadful and unmerited suffering that continues to be imposed upon believers supporting same-sex marriages. For details, go to http://www.jesus4lesbians.com/
Fraternally,
Aaron
Dear Phillip, You wrote 2 books I have a question about-The Jesus I Never Knew & The Bible Jesus Read. Are either or both of these books based on the Jewish & Hebrew roots of Christianity?
The Bible Jesus Read looks at selected books from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament), so it would probably be the closest.
Philip,
Thank you so much for writing “Disappointment with God.” The first time I read it I was dealing with issues regarding my perspective of God. I have an extremely sensitive spirit and have a hard time dealing with when God is angry in the Bible. I was mentally and emotionally abused as a child also, so I have a hard time with anger. The way God is portrayed in the Bible is not like the way I would have liked Him to be because of the anger issue. Despite being a Christian for many years and praying about this for a long time I still struggled. Even though DWG addresses different questions than what I was dealing with, it still helped me immensely. It has been too painful to read through the Old Testament myself (I’ve been through the Bible a couple of times) anymore, so it helped that you did kind of a fast forward through the Old Testament. It helped me see where God is coming from, in a way I was unable to see plodding along at just a couple chapters a day like I had done previously when reading through the Bible. I still struggle with my image of God, but it is getting better little by little, and of course Satan is always prowling around, trying to turn me away from God and tell me lies about God. But when I go through a dark valley where I again am troubled with misconceptions of God, I pull your book out again, and it helps to bring the right perspective back into focus.