Reader Recommendation: The Bible in the Ashes of Social Chaos: an Introduction to Problematic Texts, by Lewis Brogdon

Recommended by: Proclamation Project’s Preacher Book Club

The Bible in the Ashes of Social Chaos was a Preacher Book Club selection in February 2024.

From the publisher:

Daily we witness the spectacle of a country in chaos — mass shootings, racial violence, political division, and the erosion of shared civic life. Into this moment, Lewis Brogdon offers a guide to engaging biblical texts that are themselves shot through with violence, exclusion, and moral difficulty. The book provides an introduction to how preachers can approach “problematic texts” with intellectual honesty, theological faithfulness, and pastoral care.

The Bible in the Ashes of Social Chaos addresses a challenge that every working preacher faces sooner or later: what do you do with biblical texts that seem to endorse violence, sanction oppression, or simply reflect a world that no congregation today can recognize as their own? Brogdon does not resolve these texts away — he teaches preachers to engage them seriously, bringing scholarly tools and ethical commitments to bear on the hardest passages in the canon.

The Preacher Book Club selected this book because preaching honestly in a fractured social moment requires being honest about what the Bible actually contains — and what faithful interpretation looks like in the face of that honesty.

Check it out

You might also find helpful:

• Post-Traumatic Jesus — David W. Peters reads the gospels through the lens of trauma, offering fresh homiletical territory for preachers.
• Operation Cacti — A four-week Disciples sermon series on compassionate response to immigration enforcement and family separation.
• When Church Stops Working — A Preacher Book Club selection on faithful ministry in a season of decline and social fracture.

Reader Recommendations are submitted by Disciples preachers and are not created or fully reviewed by the Proclamation Project.