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.”
I found “What’s so Amazing about Grace?” to be very approachable, clear and interesting. It starts with the story of Babot’s Feast that jolted me and years later I still think about it. Our God is amazing and deserves our response.
Thank you Philip for your so very illuminating book – What’s so amazing about grace. I have been graced with grace in my life but in a way your book made the picture much clearer and the thankfulness much more thankful. Chiara Lubich gave me huge insight into how to live my life and she has and is still a huge inspiration to me however, God is great, because your book somehow showed me what we all need and that we are surrounded by grace and are surprised by grace. The ugliness of the world does not need to pull us down which was something that was beginning to get to me until I chanced upon your book.
Hi Philip,
I want to thank you for your honest approach in your writings, and many of your books had helped me through thick and thin. Currently, I’m reading your book on prayer while trying to come to terms with the Sri Lanka bombings on Easter Sunday morning. As I argued with the Lord in my head, He moved me to write an article to call on Christians to pray for brothers and sisters in Christ who are under persecution. It’s my hope that God will use the article widely in different media to reach as many Christians as possible.
I want to refer you to a book titled Outrageous Courage by Kris & Jason Vallotton. In their book, they recorded an eyewitness account of a miraculous resurrection of a woman died in an auto accident. Just thought you may be interested in looking into this.
I just wanted to thank you for your honest look at a lot of questions that most Christians seem afraid to ask. Before I learned about you, I sometimes wondered if there was anyone that asked the questions I asked, or saw the issues that I saw. At times, it seemed that the only people that did not deny the problems that to me were as plain as day were the people who most vehemently rejected the faith that I was holding on to. You have encouraged me, and shown me that it’s not wrong to ask these questions, to wonder about faith, to grasp with the issues that many seem to ignore. I’ve been reading Vanishing Grace, and it strikes at so many points that I myself have wondered; again, I want to thank you for what you’re doing. I feel more sure and strong in my own faith thanks to you, and hope to spread that encouragement to those around me.
Thank you, Matt. This truly encourages me. –Philip