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.”
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email Joannie: pyasst@aol.com
Hi Philip,
I’m from Indonesia, and I love to read your books. Currently I am reading “Reaching for the Invisible God”.
Thank you for your writings. Hope you continue to writing books many years to come.
Regards,
Benjamin
Hi Philip. I’ve been reading your book “Prayer, Does it Make any Difference” over the last couple weeks. I have really enjoyed the perspectives you offer. It has given me additional assurance in growing my relationship with God. One of many thoughts to ponder is how we need to move from providing God a checklist of things we want Him to fix, and instead how prayer provides the vehicle with which we grow in relationship with God so He may change OUR hearts to reflect His will. Today as I finished your book, my 7 siblings and I, along with my Mom prepare to say goodbye to my 89 yo Dad, who lies in a hospital with Covid and only hours to live. As your book reveals, we don’t need all the answers. God still sits on the throne and is active and in control during the joys and the heartbreaks (as we may see it). We only see a small part of story. And that’s ok. Next up, The Jesus I Never Knew. Keep writing.
How poignant, James. You are putting into actual practice what I write about.
I picked up ‘Reaching for the Invisible God’ off a rather neglected bookcase. Reading it gave me words to put to feelings I couldn’t name, and perhaps most importantly the sense that I was not alone in feeling doubt and dryness, and then anxiety and fear in response to the doubt. I found the book so helpful, and encouraging in its frank honesty. It was refreshing to be reminded that although God is unlikely to magic a solution to all of my fears and doubts, that he is steadfast and sure in his promises. I have been encouraged to ‘practice’ my faith like I would practice an instrument, and in all things to trust a God who revealed himself as Jesus Christ. Thank you for writing these books, and I hope that you will continue to use your gift for words to walk alongside those who struggle with doubt.
You warm my heart, Hannah. Thank you for encouraging me. Philip
I recently read “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” and I find myself trying to apply the lessons I learned from it everyday. To be honest I am, by personality and church background, a legalist, and for much of my life I have lived with a conception of God as a kind of stern parent or teacher who keeps a ledger of all my successes and failures. That’s also the way I’ve treated my friends and family for as long as I can remember. Your book is helping me recover for that. Thanks.
And I’m writing a memoir which tells my very similar story. –Philip
Dear Mr. Yancy,
It was in the early 80’s when I read an advertisement in Christianity Today where you asked for information about the Children Of God cult. I responded by writing you that I kept a journal all the time I was in the group (8 years). You encouraged me to keep the journal and use it as history. That inspired me to write a memoir, but my teaching duties put it on the back burner. Recently I did complete it and I put it online for free (www.trippingup.net). I just wanted to thank you for that initial spark. My favorite book that you wrote is Reaching For The Invisible God.
John Titus
Congratulations. That’s an important part of history we need to learn from.