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.”
Everytime I get inside a bookstore, the first thing that I would do is to go to HelpDesk and ask where do they keep your books.
I know you have been receiving good and aweful feedbacks and comments, but let me just express mine. I find your books stimulating, brave, and encouraging. I always find myself in the middle of realization and reflection. I like the fact that we share the same views. I am not fancy with words but I have been looking forward to speak to you.
I thank God for writers like you.
Dear Philip,
Our Homegroup have just studied your book on Prayer and now will start the next book…Whats so amazing about grace. We have all been really moved by your video clips and it has made us think at a different level esp being in partnership with God in Prayer which is so exciting.I grew up in an evangelical clergy family but much loved and even when my Dad died i had so much support but became a little missionary at the age of 11yrs old!! Now I am 68yrs old, retired nurse and creative therapist: my husband a clergyman, divorced 17yrs ago but remarried to the same man(!) 10yrs ago, 3 adopted children , one an addict but we all love each other whatever, even though we sometimes despair!!! I’m now reading The Jesus I never new and having my eyes opened! Thank you. When are you coming to England. Please come to our Homegroup!!! or even to St Albans in Herts! or to Spring Harvest??
Thank you and enjoy your Bible and mountains! With kind regards Alison Veness
I’ve appreciated your books for many years now. They cut right to the truth and bypass all the wrapping and bows. I’m a very honest, straightforward person and have always been with God. But I have questions….so many questions right now…
In the past three yrs I’ve lost my older brother, my sister, my brother-in-law, my dog….I lost my fiancee, my kids and I have had to move three times….I was in two car accidents, the second one crushed my car and no one could believe I wasn’t seriously injured or even killed….I’ve gone thru devastating legal storms that have left me penniless and seemingly without a future of any kind….I lost my job and have not been able to find another, I lost my unemployment in December of 2013 and in February of 2014 I lost our home, which meant I lost my kids too because I had to move in with my mother and there’s no room for my kids so they had to move in with their dad….I lost two best friends because they just turned their backs on me as I was going thru all of my legal trouble….I used to be a single mom with a good job, a college degree, a car, my bills were paid, and I had someone I thought loved me in my life. Almost overnight I became jobless, penniless, homeless, childless, loveless….hopeless. I never leave my mom’s house now – no transportation – and we don’t get along very well. I’m basically alone 24/7. I’ve searched for so long and so hard for a job, with absolutely no success, and am now down to my last couple of hundred dollars. My credit record is horrendous. Bills are late. I have no one to turn to, no one who can help me. Every corner of my life, and heart, is completely broken. I pray and pray and pray and pray….no response. My days are all the same now….loneliness, unemployment, worry, conflict. I miss my kids so much it’s like a deep grief. I am grieving for my siblings who died, for my dog whom I loved so much, for my job that I loved, I am grieving for my home that I lost. I am grieving for my life that is all gone now. I feel tired, unattractive, washed up, and I look it, too. My self-confidence or esteem has bottomed out. I cry all the time lately. Waiting on God? YES. For some kind of answer, for some kind of hope, for some kind of a break. What has this taught me? Right now, I feel it’s taught me that prayers aren’t always heard or answered, that maybe God does not love me the way He loves others, that punishment can be harsh and never ending, it’s taught me that maybe I’m simply destined to be this lonely failure, no matter how hard I worked and tried to have a good life and give a good life to my kids. Whatever I did to deserve all of this must have been just awful, and I feel that I deserve all of this because otherwise God would help me, right? I am so broken, I am so alone, and I can feel my heart giving up. I can feel my spirit giving up. I feel defeated. I feel abandoned.
What does one do when mercy seems to not exists? When God remains silent, impassable, as life crumbles and gets smaller and smaller by the day. What do you do when you desperately need miracles from a God who doesn’t even seem to be giving responses????
Philip,
I see that you will be speaking in Bristol this weekend as part of the Buechner series. David Stevens and I both live in Bristol as the Christian Medical & Dental Associations has a office and conference center nearby. Our regret is that we will miss hearing you. We both have speaking engagements this weekend.
May God grant you favor.
Blessings,
Gene Rudd
Yes, too bad! I have good memories of my times with CMDA in Illinois and in Uruguay. –Philip