The Scandal of Holiness, Jessica Hooten Wilson
The Scandal of Holiness, Jessica Hooten Wilson
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The Scandal of Holiness
Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints

Author: Jessica Hooten Wilson, Lauren Winner

Narrator: Nancy Peterson

Unabridged: 8 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/29/2022


Synopsis

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.

About Jessica Hooten Wilson

Jessica Hooten Wilson is inaugural visiting scholar at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. She previously taught at the University of Dallas. She is the author of The Scandal of Holiness, 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), and two books on Walker Percy. She is also coeditor of Learning the Good Life and Solzhenitsyn and American Culture. Wilson speaks around the world on topics as varied as Russian novelists, Catholic thinkers, and Christian ways of reading.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Darren

I don't know why I liked this book of scandal and gentle political intrigue so much, but I did. The author's tone is light and funny, even when telling of murder, political kidnaping, and rampant adultery - and it somehow works.......more

Goodreads review by Artie

Although set in the early 80's, this book still sparkles. The London that is depicted still exists, and the character flaws are timeless. The only reason that it's not a five-star review is that it is fractionally too long - 200 pages would have been better than the actual 233pp. Recommended.......more

Goodreads review by Graham

An excellent novel from A.N. Wilson. I really enjoyed it.......more