Honorable mentions: books exemplifying truth, beauty, and goodness

Poetry

The Locust Years

Paul J. Pastor
Wiseblood Books, 129 pages

Paul J. Pastor’s new collection of poems brings probing eyes of faith to “particular ‘unfixable’ griefs.” Composed during what the author identifies in his introduction as the hardest years of his life “for reasons that are quietly private,” the rest of the book is colored by the shadow of this unspoken hardship. But the reader doesn’t need the details to realize that Pastor has had the same struggles we all have living in a world that feels like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes at the same time. “Real hope is painful,” Pastor writes. In many cases, Pastor’s poems do what the Psalms do—honestly portray pain. His poems tend more toward structure than most contemporary poetry, often rhyming. They cover subjects as small as what the bag lady brings to the potluck (“The lukewarm food bank cheese / or last month’s beef gleaned from behind the store”) and as vast as what it might mean to bear a cross. In his poem beginning “Because I thought that hope was not for me,” I hear echoes of Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” and T.S. Eliot’s “East Coker” (“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope / For hope would be hope for the wrong thing”). You could read Pastor’s slim book in a day. But you could also reread it repeatedly over the years. Not all the poems have easily apparent meanings. Many deserve rumination. But even those with elusive messages carry instantly felt truth, and the volume feels like a real contribution to the robust canon of Christian poetry. —Chelsea Boes

Church and state

Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer

John D. Wilsey
Eerdmans, 288 pages

This timely and important book makes a Christian case for historic conservatism and its time-­honored tenet of religious liberty. Wilsey’s argument is needed in a time when some frustrated Christians are hankering for reactionary, state-­centered schemes for (re)making America into a Christian nation. Wilsey contends that in our era, when partisans on both sides long to use coercive power to advance their agenda, conservatives are in the best position to defend a classic belief in liberty, including (most importantly) religious freedom. Liberty, in the conservative tradition, is freedom to do what you were created to do, not the freedom to do whatever you want. But by itself, the ideal of liberty cannot teach us what we were created to do. In the Anglo-American tradition, Christianity supplies our understanding of life’s purposes. The fundamental aim of a flourishing human life is to worship God in spirit and truth. People must be free from coercion in religion to worship God in a proper manner. Thus, religious liberty is a traditional hallmark of conservatism. Wilsey draws on the greatest exponents of the Anglo-American tradition of ordered liberty, including Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Russell Kirk. Christians will benefit from Wilsey’s review of these figures. Church leaders can make a Biblical argument for religious liberty, but Christianity can also draw from a robust tradition of conservative thought for defending freedom of religion. We should know about both traditions. Abandoning either the Biblical or the Anglo-American tradition of ordered liberty would be foolish and reactionary. As Wilsey wisely observes, anyone who wishes to remake American society by imposing an idealized social and religious order is a radical, by definition. Dramatic schemes to transform American society via state coercive power are not conservative, whether such schemes are left-wing or right-wing, secular or Christian. —Thomas S. Kidd

Hymns

The Sing! Hymnal

Keith & Kristyn Getty
Crossway, 912 pages

Hymn writers Keith and Kristyn Getty’s passion for equipping God’s people to sing together culminated in 2025 with the release of The Sing! Hymnal, a comprehensive volume offering nearly 500 songs to equip and encourage the people of God. Alongside classic hymns by well-known authors like Fanny Crosby, Isaac Watts, and Charles Wesley, the Gettys have thematically integrated modern-­day offerings from writers such as Matt Boswell, Matt Papa, and Stuart Townend. An extensive number of the Gettys’ own hymns are also included among the pages, although keen observers will notice that a few typical hymnal mainstays, including “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus,” were omitted. The Gettys write in the volume’s prelude that the task of selecting which hymns to highlight and which to pass over was a daunting challenge. Ultimately, they were guided by the goal of including substantial and beautiful hymns that would help people proclaim God’s saving work while finding joy in worshipping Him. “Our songs should be so vital that they are worth singing 50 years from now and beyond,” the Gettys write in the hymnal’s postlude. “The most enduring hymns from the past show their timeless value in how they continue to speak to each new generation and inspire new hymn writers to this day.” Interspersed throughout the hymnal are hundreds of short prayers and liturgies, and the back matter incorporates several helpful resources, including suggestions for leading hymn singing, a brief history of each hymn, and indexes for facilitating hymn selection. The Sing! Hymnal’s careful curation makes it an excellent contribution to the church or home library and one that will serve and shape generations to come. —Kristin Chapman

Christian living

A Little Theology of Exercise: Enjoying Christ in Body and Soul

David Mathis
Crossway, 128 pages

I happen to enjoy working out, but I have often viewed physical exertion as necessarily separate from spiritual discipline (unless I work out and pray simultaneously). David Mathis’ book reminds the reader that physical movement can and should be a holy endeavor that serves the pursuit of spiritual excellence. God intended for our bodies to move regularly. That’s evidenced by the post-workout release of endorphins, boost of brain function, and long-term growth in mental toughness. When we submit to that design, our whole selves function more efficiently, allowing us to better glorify and enjoy God—the very purpose of our existence. But modern conveniences have made much of our physical exertion unnecessary. We drive to most destinations. Instead of hauling buckets to the well, we turn on the faucet. These advances are great blessings, but, “To the degree that our default is to move as little as possible,” writes Mathis, “we undermine or inhibit some essential dynamics in the Christian life.” The Apostle Paul said the value of physical training is limited, but according to Mathis, that “cuts both ways.” Some believers may be tempted by an industry built around the worship of fitness, but too many neglect movement altogether. Well-meaning Christians might recommend exercise with the because-your-body-is-a-temple line of reasoning. It’s a valid argument, but Mathis takes it a step further: God calls our physical bodies “very good.” And stewarding that very good gift with a reasonable amount of training can contribute to the ultimate goal of Christ-likeness. A Little Theology of Exercise is small enough to tuck into a gym bag. But its application goes beyond the bench press. In the words of theologian Abraham Kuyper, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’” —Bekah Bernhardt

Biography

The Boys in the Light: An Extraordinary World War II Story of Survival, Faith, and Brotherhood

Nina Willner
Dutton, 384 pages

Nina Willner’s The Boys in the Light is the most recent example of World War II’s inexhaustible store of human dignity and courage. The book traces the stories of two groups of young men during the war, a company of tankers in the U.S. 3rd Armored Division led by Lt. Elmer Hovland and two German Jews, Eddie Willner—the author’s father—and Maurits Swaab, caught up in the clinical atrocities of the Holocaust. Early one morning in 1945 their paths collided. As the 3rd Armored rolled through Germany, Hovland’s tank was halted by two emaciated escaped prisoners from a Nazi death march. Not only did the soldiers rescue Willner and Swaab that day, but the escapees saved the tankers from a surprise Panzer attack just over the next hill. The book is an excellent example of micro-history, moving effortlessly between the stories of the young men and the larger, more familiar narrative of the war. Willner’s eye for evocative detail like the “smelly field jackets” and “greasy, unshaved war-creased faces” gives the history dimension. And she does not shy away from the brutal realities, describing corpses left hanging for days and living people who were little more than “withered … skeletons, eyes like saucers.” Perhaps most profoundly, The Boys in the Light puts the reader with these men inside two different cages—trapped in the confines of a Sherman tank and in the death-camp cell. What defined both groups is what kind of human they decided to be in their respective cages: to believe or to lose faith, to hope or to despair, to love or to hate. As Willner writes, “Many who once believed in miracles no longer did. Others were angry at God. Some stopped believing. Others continued, praying only for rescue.” —David J. Davis

Literary criticism

The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945

Joseph Loconte
Thomas Nelson, 288 pages

The decades between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second witnessed a drastic overturning of the reigning social, political, and intellectual order of the West. Fascism and communism emerged as ideological challenges that debunked the supposed inevitability of worldwide liberal democracy. Modernism in the academy and the arts jettisoned over­riding concerns for meaning or objective reality in favor of expressing things felt in the throes of existential crises. Standing athwart these trends were two of the most influential Christian minds of the 20th century: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. As Joseph Loconte recounts in his new book, both men “became determined to reclaim and revitalize the cultural and spiritual ideals of Western civilization … Whether acutely conscious or not of the tectonic political and ideological developments in Asia and Europe—forces of disintegration—they dedicated themselves to defending the Western tradition, especially its moral and religious foundations.” Most readers are acquainted with Tolkien’s high fantasy saga The Lord of the Rings and Lewis’ Narnia series and Christian apologetics. By situating them in the broader context of the onset of World War II, Loconte reveals that their work as Oxford dons and writers served as a vital bulwark. They stood against forces then at work in the university to undermine classical conceptions of truth and beauty, and they stood against the fascist regimes in Germany and Italy. Excellently written with a firm grasp of the period at hand, Loconte gives readers a stirring appreciation of all that Lewis and Tolkien did to preserve the best of what the West has to offer to civilization in all ages. —Flynn Evans

Fiction

To Go On Living: Stories

Narine Abgaryan
Plough, 220 pages

There are plenty of works of fiction about war, but few books explore the consequences of conflict as profoundly as Narine Abgaryan’s To Go On Living, a collection of linked short stories set during the early-1990s war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The quietest war novel you’ll ever read, Abgaryan’s narrative takes place in Berd, a small Armenian town unlucky enough to be situated in the mountainous border region between the two warring nations and whose inhabitants bear the brunt of Azerbaijani invasion. For as much as explosions and gunfire happen on the periphery of these vignettes, To Go On Living is not a book of battles. It’s neither gruesome nor particularly violent. Rather it’s a book about the impact such things have on regular human souls whose primary concerns are family, faith, culture, and memory. It’s about keeping on in the face of chaos and conflagration far beyond one’s own control. “Once [war] starts,” one character says, “it tends to never end. The war will spread slowly, poisoning with its foul breath everything in its way.” And yet, says another character, “No matter how badly your soul aches and no matter how much your heart weeps, you must maintain order in the one tiny sliver of the world that has been entrusted to you.” As Tolkien’s wise wizard Gandalf once told a weary Hobbit, it is not up to us to decide which times we will live in, “all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” In To Go On Living, that looks like hope in the quotidian, love amid the despair, courage in the face of grief. It’s a book that exhibits another of Tolkien’s lovely aphorisms: “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” —David Kern

Christian Ministry

How To Teach Kids Theology: Deep Truths for Growing Faith

Sam Luce & Hunter Williams
New Growth Press, 208 pages

Ministries to children and youth sometimes have a bad reputation in the church. Older congregants sometimes have a sneaking suspicion that there’s too much emphasis on fun and games and not enough emphasis on spiritual matters. In their book How To Teach Kids Theology, Sam Luce and Hunter Williams highlight one of the main reasons children’s ministries get in trouble: A Barna Research Group poll found that children’s ministry leaders tend to be more comfortable talking with kids about social issues than they are talking about doctrine. Luce and Hunter write, “If it’s true that ministry leaders and parents struggle to pass on primary doctrines of faith due to lack of training, then churches should make such instruction a top priority.” The authors hope to help churches do just that. Their book includes practical sections to help leaders think through the goals of children’s ministry and develop frameworks upon which to build weekly lessons. But the reason this book makes it on WORLD’s best-books-of-the-year list is that it’s also deeply theological. Writing from a gently Reformed perspective, the authors emphasize that theology isn’t optional—everyone has a theology, whether it’s conscious and coherent or not. It also roots theology in the Biblical narrative, interpreting the Scriptures through a Christological lens. They make the case that church workers and parents shouldn’t leave out the tough parts of the Bible when teaching children. Children intuitively know life is hard, so giving them a sugar-coated version of the arc of redemption makes the gospel sound less realistic. The key is distilling Scriptural truth so a child can understand it, rather than watering it down, which might make it more kid friendly but robs it of its power. How To Teach Kids Theology can help church leaders and parents navigate this important distinction. —Collin Garbarino