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
Dear Philip,
I recently read,
“We have lost the ability to create metaphors for life. We have lost the ability to give shape to things, to recognize the events around us and in us, let alone interpret them. In this way we have ceased being the likeness of God, and our existence is unjustified. We are, in fact, dead … We feed on knowledge which has long since decayed.”
(Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Austrian visual artist/painter, 1928-2000)
Your book In His Image (you wrote with Dr. Paul Brand) sits here on my desk as I try to wrap my mind around the Imago Dei and what it means to “being the likeness of God”. There is this deep sense, a calling maybe, to make others aware of it anew.
Your words are a balm and a bright light to me. You writing always seems to point the reader to this image of God in us. I just felt the need to let you know this and encourage you to continue!
Such beautiful encouragement, Heidi. Bless you. Philip
Would you be willing to provide a Top Ten List of films you recommend – faith based or others. Thank you. My Small Group is presently studying The Jesus I Never Knew.
I have weird tastes in movies. Many of these are old, probably unavailable, so I’ll include extras. Don’t know if these are my Top Ten, but they moved me:
Shine, In America, Sandakan 8, Stroszek, Scenes from a Marriage, Shy People, Amadeus, Apostle, Adu, As It Is In Heaven, East-West, God Grew Tired of Us, Greenfingers, To End All Wars, Hiding and Seeking, The Quartet, The Story of Luke, Mother and Child
Hello Mr. Yancey,
I just found your book “Christians and Politics: Uneasy Partners”. Though written for an election that now seems eons in the past, I am finding it perhaps even more relevant today. I wonder what you think now about this quote you shared in the book where a New York Times editorial “…warned that the activism of religious conservatives ‘poses a far greater threat to democracy than was presented by communism.'” At the time you wondered, “Could they seriously believe that?”
Given the events of January 6, 2021, might that editorial have been a bit “prophetic”?
I came to the website looking for a way to send that question to you, and stopped to read your latest blog post – Talking with the Other Side. I will try to take it to heart because I know it’s what Jesus would want me to do, but I am finding it very difficult to want to relate to fellow Christians who are willing to die on the swords of anti-abortion and homosexuality, but who see no need for social justice reform in this country. When you quote Schaeffer as saying that “few here questioned the assumption that persons are created in the image of God..” it is difficult to get others to see that people like Schaeffer really mean white people are created in the image of God. The rest of us? Maybe, maybe not.
Thank you for the opportunity to share.
I am currently writing two novels simultaneously, one of which is a dark fantasy set in the medieval era. Having to create fictional religions has been challenging being a man of faith, history suggests that people from different regions were susceptible to different beliefs, as far fetched as worshiping water its-self. Fantasy writing is a great medium to explore what may or could have been carried through to the modern era in terms of devotion.
Then we have the darkside, and what beliefs and fuels them, the whispers from the void that quell the light. It is fascinating to explore as I continue to write.
Hello Philip,
Frankly, it has been a while since I’ve last read anything Yancy. However that does not mean I’ve given up reading in general or anything Yancy specifically.
Actually, I have been trying to find a part of a story I read a long while ago, written by you, in which you describe the character, meaning the Lord, emphatically pleading with (all I can recall is) ‘a man in a hut’. After a considerable amount of pleading, the Lord finally turns away. Do you remember that story, if you do can you tell me which book it is from? PLEASE?!
By the way, I was reading your story this morning and the statement, “Along the way I realized that God had been misrepresented to me”, succinctly describes my experience having been raised in the Catholic church. I have been looking for a way to describe my experience for many decades, especially as I get older and realizing that there was and is some good that came/comes out of that whole chapter of my life. Being able to verbalize a description of my experience is a bit of a relief, frankly.
I would appreciate hearing from you with respect to “that” book!
Sorry, Bill, but that story rings no bells for me. I did a word search on “a man in a hut” and turned up nothing. I wish I could help. –Philip