The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints

An award-winning author shows that holiness means being radical in our ways of imagining the future, imagining each other, and imagining God, and that reading works of great literature can help us cultivate an imagination that moves us toward holiness.

Christianity Today 2023 Award of Merit (Culture & the Arts)
Midwest Book Review 2023 Silver Book Award (Nonfiction - Religion/Philosophy)

How do we become better people? Initiatives such as New Year's resolutions, vision boards, thirty-day plans, and self-help books often fail to compel us to live differently. We settle for small goals--frugal spending, less yelling at the kids, more time at the gym--but we are called to something far greater. We are created to be holy.

Award-winning author Jessica Hooten Wilson explains that learning to hear the call of holiness requires cultivating a new imagination--one rooted in the act of reading. Learning to read with eyes attuned to the saints who populate great works of literature moves us toward holiness, where God opens up a way of living that extends far beyond what we can conjure for ourselves. Literature has the power to show us what a holy life looks like, and these depictions often scandalize even as they shape our imagination. As such, careful reading becomes a sort of countercultural spiritual discipline.

The book includes devotionals, prayers, wisdom from the saints, and more to help individuals and groups cultivate a saintly imagination. Foreword by Lauren F. Winner.