Reading for the Love of God - by Jessica Hooten Wilson Paperback

About the Book

An award-winning author shows us how to read as a spiritual practice in a way that encourages humility, increases our charity toward others, frees our minds and hearts from the trappings of contemporary idols, and directs us toward contemplation.

Book Synopsis

"A timely and accessible primer."--Christian Century

What if we viewed reading as not just a personal hobby or a pleasurable indulgence but also a spiritual practice that deepens our faith?

In Reading for the Love of God, award-winning author Jessica Hooten Wilson does just that--and then shows readers how to reap the spiritual benefits of reading. She argues that the simple act of reading can help us learn to pray well, love our neighbor, be contemplative, practice humility, and disentangle ourselves from contemporary idols.

This accessible and engaging guide outlines several ways Christian thinkers--including Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Frederick Douglass, and Dorothy L. Sayers--approached the act of reading. It also includes useful special features such as suggested reading lists, guided practices for approaching texts, and tips for meditating on specific texts or Bible passages.

By learning to read for the love of God, readers will discover not only a renewed love of reading but also a new, vital spiritual practice to deepen their walk with God.

From the Back Cover

"Makes the case for reading as a means of transformation"

What if we viewed reading as not just a personal hobby or a pleasurable indulgence but a spiritual practice that deepens our faith?

In Reading for the Love of God, award-winning author Jessica Hooten Wilson shows us how to reap the spiritual benefits of reading. She argues that the simple act of reading can help us learn to pray well, love our neighbor, be contemplative, practice humility, and disentangle ourselves from contemporary idols.

"In her deft and beautiful way, Jessica Hooten Wilson crafts a theology of reading for Christians who have forgotten why it matters. She challenges us to take up and read--not only because it teaches about the faith of our past but because it makes our faith stronger for the present too. Get this book to learn, to grow, and to be inspired."
--Beth Allison Barr, professor, Baylor University; bestselling author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood

"Hooten Wilson makes the case for reading as a means of transformation into Christlikeness. Her own meditations on the theology, spirituality, and ethics of reading are punctuated with studies of great Christian readers, male and female, down through the ages, which adds a rich layer of historical insight to her own brilliant reflections. This book is profound and practical at once. As St. Augustine would say, tolle lege (take and read)!"
--Tish Harrison Warren, Anglican priest and author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

"We are what we read. Yet, it is not only what we read but also how we read and to what ends. Hooten Wilson wonderfully demonstrates that reading is not only an art but also, most importantly, a transcendent calling, mission, and vocation."
--Gloria Purvis, host and executive producer of The Gloria Purvis Podcast

About the Author

Jessica Hooten Wilson (PhD, Baylor University) is the Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. She is the author or editor of eight books, including The Scandal of Holiness (winner of a Christianity Today 2023 Award of Merit), Flannery O'Connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage?, and Giving the Devil His Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky (winner of a 2018 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award). Hooten Wilson speaks around the world on topics as varied as Russian novelists, Catholic thinkers, and Christian ways of reading.