Philip Yancey

The World Before Us

October 2017September 2017 by Philip Yancey

I spent ten days this month in Alaska, at a writing conference sponsored by the author Leslie Leyland Fields. From a small private island just off the large island of Kodiak, Leslie and her family run a commercial fishing operation. The twenty of us who flew in from “the lower 48” had to adapt to … Read more

A Tale of Two Families

August 2017 by Philip Yancey

In the process of writing a memoir, I have been reflecting on the families of two sisters. The first, Joyce, ruled with the iron hand of legalism. Her five kids obeyed a lengthy set of strict rules—“Because I say so, that’s why!” Now grown, they tell me they acquiesced mainly out of fear of punishment. … Read more

Reading Wars

August 2017July 2017 by Philip Yancey

I am going through a personal crisis. I used to love reading. I am writing this blog in my office, surrounded by 27 tall bookcases laden with some 5,000 books. Over the years I have read them, marked them up, and recorded the annotations in a computer database for potential references in my writing. To … Read more

Fatherless

July 2020June 2017 by Philip Yancey

I never thought it strange, not having a father. I was barely a year old when my father died, so I didn’t miss him. How could I? I never knew him. In elementary school some kids didn’t know better than to ask, “How’d he die?” and when I told them polio, my status went up. … Read more

A View from Abroad

June 2017May 2017 by Philip Yancey

If you feel discouraged about the church in the U.S.—or the state of the nation itself, for that matter—I recommend traveling abroad. I just returned from two countries that share a common border, Bulgaria and Greece, and both make our own problems seem small by contrast. Bulgaria may hold the world record for bad luck … Read more